Trump might cede climate leadership to China

After a campaign featuring promises to slash landmark climate legislation, and a first term record that included pulling the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement, President-elect Donald Trump’s win casts a shadow of doubt over the world of global climate policy.

The Paris Agreement, which Trump vowed to withdraw from once again in his second term as president, is a landmark pledge by 195 countries and the European Union to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Now that Republicans have secured full control of Congress, the incoming Trump administration could announce U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement in early 2025 and complete the process by the beginning of 2026.

Trump might even pull out of the entire United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change process which the Paris Agreement is a part of, BMO Capital Markets analysts wrote in a note last week.

As an isolationist, Trump-led American foreign policy cedes global leadership on the issue, an increasingly willing China can assume the spot instead.

Ceding global climate leadership to China “would be a mistake”

China is looking to “play a more proactive role internationally on climate change,” said Joanna Lewis, an associate professor at Georgetown University and expert in international climate policy.

But “it would be a mistake for the United States to completely cede not just [its] leadership role on climate change. But the development of low carbon technologies, that’s really the area that has been particularly competitive between China and the United States,” said Lewis.

“The rest of the world needs these technologies, and so is going to be increasingly reliant on China, unless you see other players like the United States building up their own involvement in these industries.”

President Joe Biden aimed to address the Chinese competition with his landmark climate and jobs act the Inflation Reduction Act, which Trump has also vowed to axe.

The aim of the IRA is to “directly compete with China” in key clean energy industries, “not just for use in the United States, but potentially for export to the rest of the world,” Lewis said.

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

“So if the United States sort of cedes the leadership role in clean energy technology manufacturing to China, then that gives China even more ability to dominate the markets in the rest of the emerging and developing world as well.”

But it’s not all doom and gloom, Lewis says, as “there are ways the U.S. can continue to be involved, even in the absence of Trump leadership on this issue.”

When Trump first pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement in 2017, there was an increase in subnational engagement at international climate negotiations, Lewis said. This included governors and senators taking action to demonstrate American initiative in climate policy and engage in diplomacy.

“If Trump cedes leadership in the international realm, the states and other subnational actors will happily fill that void,” Lewis said.

Former California Gov. Brown was particularly active in climate diplomacy during the first Trump administration. He helmed the California-China Climate Institute which organized high-level climate diplomacy meetings between U.S. and China, including for his successor, current California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The Inflation Reduction Act has “staying power”

Trump has had nothing but negative things to say about Biden’s IRA. Solar stocks tanked the day after the Nov. 5 election, on fears that Trump would repeal the massive climate bill, which includes tax credits to expand solar energy.

But the IRA might prove tough to dismantle for the incoming Trump administration.

“Support for clean energy has become bipartisan in the United States,” 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 Inflation Reduction Act passed are located in Congressional districts represented by Republicans.”

Eighteen House Republicans, many of whom faced difficult re-election bids in the November election, wrote to Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, urging him to keep some of the tax credits and deductions in the IRA, writing that, “a full repeal would create a worst-case scenario where we would have spent billions of taxpayer dollars and received next to nothing in return.”

In Baku, Podesta said, “it’s precisely because the IRA has staying power that I am confident that the United States will continue to reduce emissions – benefitting our own country and benefitting the world.”