Oh Well!! Shit Climate Policies Over Next Four Years Could Eliminate $80 Billion In US Manufacturing & Energy Exports
The United States’s blossoming emergence as a clean energy superpower could be stopped in its tracks by Donald Trump, further empowering Chinese leadership and forfeiting tens of billions of dollars of investment to other countries, according to a new report. Trump’s promise to repeal major climate policies passed during Joe Biden’s presidency threatens to push $80bn of investment to other countries and cost the US up to $50bn in lost exports, the analysis found, surrendering ground to China and other emerging powers in the race to build electric cars, batteries, solar and wind energy for the world.
“The US will still install a bunch of solar panels and wind turbines, but getting rid of those policies would harm the US’s bid for leadership in this new world,” said Bentley Allan, an environmental and political policy expert at Johns Hopkins University, who co-authored the new study. “The energy transition is inevitable and the future prosperity of countries hinges on being part of the clean energy supply chain,” he said. “If we exit the competition, it will be very difficult to re-enter. “This was our chance to enter the race for clean technologies while everyone else, not just China but South Korea and Nigeria and countries in Europe, do the same.”
Under Biden, the US legislated the Chips Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, all aimed in varying degrees to deal with the climate crisis while also bolstering American manufacturing. The IRA alone, with its major incentives for clean energy, is credited with helping create around 300,000 new jobs, with the vast majority of $150bn in new manufacturing investment flowing to Republican-held districts.
Trump, however, has called this spending wasteful and vowed to erase it. “I will immediately terminate the green new scam,” the president-elect said shortly before his election win. “That will be such an honor. The greatest scam in the history of any country.” Doing this may be politically fraught, even with Republican control of Congress, due to the glut of new jobs and factories in conservative-leaning areas. But should Trump’s plan prevail then planned US manufacturing projects would be canceled, according to the new report, leaving American firms reliant upon overseas suppliers for components. “Without these investments and tax credits, US industry will be hobbled just as it is getting going, ceding the ground to others,” the report states.
EDIT
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/14/trump-clean-energy-climate-policies