Trump may cede climate leadership to China | Wilnesh News

President-elect Donald Trump’s victory has cast a pall of doubt over the global climate policy landscape after campaigning on promises to slash landmark climate legislation and set a first-term record that included withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris climate accord. .

Trump has vowed to once again withdraw from the Paris Agreement, a landmark commitment by 195 countries and the European Union to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, during his second term as president.

Now that the Republicans have full control of Congress, the incoming Trump administration may announce the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement in early 2025 and complete the process in early 2026.

BMO Capital Markets analysts wrote in a report last week that Trump may even withdraw from the entire United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change process to which the Paris Agreement is a part.

As an isolationist, U.S. foreign policy under Trump has abdicated global leadership on this issue, a position that an increasingly willing China could take.

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 hopes to “play a more active role internationally on climate change issues.”

But “not only would the United States completely abandon its leadership role on climate change, that would be a mistake. The development of low-carbon technologies is indeed an area where competition between China and the United States is particularly fierce,” Lewis said.

“The rest of the world needs these technologies and will therefore become more and more dependent on China unless you see other countries like the United States starting to get involved in these industries as well.”

President Joe Biden aims to address competition from China with his landmark climate and jobs bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, which Trump has also vowed to repeal.

Lewis said the IRA aims to “directly compete with China” in key clean energy industries “not only for use in the United States but potentially for export to other parts of the world.”

The law also aims to help “build clean energy supply chains globally so that China is no longer responsible for the vast majority of clean energy manufacturing in key sectors,” she added.

“Therefore, if the United States cedes leadership in clean energy technology manufacturing to China, China will also be in a better position to dominate markets in other emerging and developing countries.”

But it’s not all doom and gloom, Lewis said, because “even if Trump lacks leadership on this issue, there are ways the United States can remain engaged.”

When Trump first withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement in 2017, local participation in international climate negotiations increased, Lewis said. This includes governors and senators taking action to demonstrate U.S. initiative on climate policy and engaging in diplomacy.

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

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

Inflation-lowering bill has ‘staying power’

Except Trump negative There’s something to be said about Biden’s IRA. Solar stocks plunged the day after the Nov. 5 election on concerns that Trump would repeal a massive climate bill that included an expansion of tax credits for solar energy.

But dismantling the IRA may prove difficult for the incoming Trump administration.

“There is bipartisan support for clean energy in the United States,” says U.S. climate envoy John Podesta explain This week, the United Nations hosts the COP29 climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan. “Since the passage of the Inflation Cut Act, 57% of the new clean energy jobs have been located in congressional districts represented by Republicans.”

Eighteen House Republicans, many of whom face tough re-election bids in the November election, wrote to Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson urging him to preserve some tax credits and deductions in IRAs, writing, “Across the board Repeal would result in, in a worst-case scenario, spending billions of taxpayer dollars while getting next to nothing in return.

“It is because of the IRA’s staying power that I believe the United States will continue to reduce emissions – for the benefit of our own country and for the benefit of the world,” Podesta said in Baku.