Trump could cede leadership on climate change to China

After a campaign that featured promises to cut landmark climate legislation and first-term achievements such as pulling the United States out of the Paris climate change agreement, President-elect Donald Trump’s victory will change global climate policy. It casts a shadow of doubt on the world.

The Paris Agreement, which President Trump vowed to withdraw from again during his second term, is a landmark commitment by 195 countries and the European Union to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

With Republicans securing full control of Congress, the incoming Trump administration could announce the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate accord in early 2025, with the process completed by early 2026.

Analysts at BMO Capital Markets said in a note last week that President Trump could even withdraw from the entire United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change process, of which the Paris Agreement is a part.

The isolationist Trump-led US foreign policy could cede global leadership on this issue to an increasingly ambitious China.

Giving up global climate leadership to China ‘would be a mistake’

Joanna Lewis, an associate professor at Georgetown University and an expert on international climate policy, said China aims to “take a more active role internationally on climate change.”

However, “It would be a mistake for the United States to completely concede. [its] The role of leadership on climate change. But the development of low-carbon technologies is precisely the area where competition is particularly intense between China and the United States,” Lewis said.

“The rest of the world also needs these technologies, so we will become increasingly dependent on China unless other players, like the United States, increase their own involvement in these industries.”

President Joe Biden aimed to counter competition from China with the Inflation Control Act, a landmark climate and jobs bill that Trump has also vowed to repeal.

The IRA’s purpose is to “compete directly with China” in key clean energy industries, Lewis said, “not only for use within the United States, but potentially for export to other parts of the world.” said.

The law also aims to help “build clean energy supply chains around the world so that China is not responsible for the majority of clean energy production in key sectors,” it added.

“So if the United States were to cede a leading role in producing clean energy technologies to China, China would also have greater ability to dominate markets in other emerging and developing countries.”

But Lewis said all is not doom and gloom, saying, “Even without President Trump’s leadership on this issue, there are ways for the United States to remain engaged.”

When President Trump first pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement in 2017, local involvement in international negotiations on climate change increased, Lewis said. This includes governors and senators taking action to demonstrate U.S. leadership on climate policy and engage in diplomacy.

“If Trump cedes leadership in the international realm, states and other local actors will be happy to fill the void,” Lewis said.

Brown, a former California governor, was particularly active in climate diplomacy during the first Trump administration. He led the California-China Climate Institute, which organized high-level climate diplomacy meetings between the United States and China, including with his successor, current California Governor Gavin Newsom.

Inflation control laws have “sustainability”

Trump had nothing else. negative What I want to say about Biden’s IRA. The day after the Nov. 5 election, solar stocks tumbled on concerns that President Trump would repeal a massive climate change bill that included tax credits to expand solar energy.

However, dismantling the IRA may be difficult for the incoming Trump administration.

“Support for clean energy is bipartisan in the United States,” said U.S. Special Envoy for Climate John Podesta. said This week at the United Nations-sponsored COP29 climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan. “Fifty-seven percent of the new clean energy jobs created since the Anti-Inflation Act was passed are in Republican-held congressional districts.”

Eighteen House Republicans, many of whom are facing re-election in the November election, sent a letter to Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson urging him to keep some IRA tax deductions and exemptions, saying, “If we abolish them completely, , in the worst-case scenario, we would have spent billions of taxpayer dollars and gotten almost nothing in return.”

“I am confident that the IRA’s staying power will allow the United States to continue reducing emissions in its own interest and in the world’s interest,” Podesta said in Baku.