The environment has been in the front line of President Trump’s trade war, in particular his battle with China over electric vehicles (EVs) and the minerals needed for the green economy, for example lithium and cobalt. Despite the present temporary and partial tariff wars retreat, his environmental wrecking ball appears not to have lost any of its momentum.
It is significant that Trump’s partial retreat did not include China, which still faces a prohibitive 145% tariff wall at the time of writing. Among other things, this is intended to wreck the Chinese EV industry, the world’s biggest, and to make it too expensive for US firms to buy strategic minerals important for green technology from China, where there are some of the biggest global deposits. These companies will then be forced to switch purchases to countries under greater US control, an aim shared by the previous administration of Joe Biden.
It is not clear how far Trump’s ambitions will be achieved, partly because making predictions means taking aim at the very fast-moving target of an unpredictable demagogue. His goal of destroying the Chinese EV industry may not be plain sailing. Elon Musk’s EV firm, Tesla, until recently the global leader, has its biggest factory in China, and it is no coincidence that Musk launched a ferocious public attack on Trump’s tariff ‘Tsar’, Peter Navarro, calling him “dumber than a sack of bricks” and “truly a moron” – an onslaught possibly contributing to the president’s partial tariff retreat.
Like other US multinationals, Tesla makes super-profits from its Chinese operation, where workers are low-paid and super-exploited, and cannot join independent trade unions or go on strike without risking vicious reprisals. In the short term at least, Musk’s US-based EV operations will also be hit, because a lot of the basic materials for electric vehicles are sourced from China, in particular lithium for batteries. He will not be helped by Trump’s latest, temporary, relaxation on tariffs, that includes electronic equipment only. Uncertainty surrounding the future EV market has led to a report in the Washington Post that “a stunning number of (proposed) electric vehicle battery factories are being cancelled” in the US.
Not just battery makers will face increased costs due to tariffs, other clean energy producers will also be hit: for example, the price of imported steel for wind turbines will rise. Industries in the West, including in the USA, will have supply problems, since China exports a strategic mineral important for the green economy, antinomy, used in solar panel manufacturing. It stopped deliveries of this mineral even before the present trade war began, something very unlikely to change in the face of current US attacks. Also, the state-controlled China Daily reported that export restrictions have been put on seven rare-earth minerals crucial for manufacturing high-performance magnets used in green energy technologies.
The US president’s first act in his first term of office in the White House was to withdraw from the UN’s 2015 Paris Agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions. This, however, is highly unlikely to make any difference to the fight against climate change, since Paris has had no impact at all in the ten years since the agreement was reached. On the other hand, Trump’s ‘drill baby drill’ policy and the creation of a ‘National Energy Dominance Council’, with the aim of ‘making more money than anybody’s ever made with energy’, if fulfilled, will add another twist to the upward spiral of the greenhouse gas emissions driving global warming.
Ironically, the Dominance Council’s brief to drive up already record figures for oil and gas production could be difficult to fulfil since the current trade war-driven fall in the price of oil will deter investment. Also, the previous Democrat administrations of Biden and Barak Obama set a very high bar, presiding over the fastest and largest growth of fossil fuel production capacity in history. This highlights the Democrats’ hypocrisy in accusing the present US government of ‘taking a wrecking ball’ to the environment.
Other Trump initiatives will make it harder to deal with the effects of climate change. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has been ordered to eliminate all climate change activities. FEMA is responsible for responding to hurricanes, wildfires, storms and floods – extreme weather events driven and exacerbated by climate change. NASA’s chief scientist, climate expert Katherine Calvin, along with 20 of her colleagues, has been fired on Trump’s orders. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, the organisation responsible for forecasting hurricanes and other extreme events, is laying off 20% of its staff, again on Trump’s direction. It is facing a $1.3bn budget cut, with all research on climate and weather axed.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is the president’s prime target, with $20bn of climate projects already axed, aiming to cut spending by 65% this year. Around 1,100 staff, plus 200,000 more on probation, will be fired in the Office of Research and Development as it is closed down. Its Trump-appointed head has announced a list of 31 environmental regulations it will water down or eliminate. Apart from long-term negative effects on global warming, these changes will have an immediate impact on public health. Rules affecting air pollution from cars and from coal power plants that have restrictions on mercury emissions linked to brain damage will be targeted, as will clean water protections for rivers and streams.
Reports based on the EPA’s own analysis say there will be 200,000 extra deaths caused by heart, respiratory, and other health problems in the next 25 years due to the changes. The current regulations, now under threat, are projected to avoid 100 million symptomatic asthma incidents in the US by 2050. The regulations that do remain will be much harder to enforce because of huge cuts to staff with responsibility for this area. Funding to promote biodiversity does not escape. Cuts are lined up for species recovery projects and habitat conservation and restoration.
In addition to deregulation and the decimation of climate research, the US science base – by far the biggest and most advanced in the world – is facing huge attacks, mainly directed at areas of pure research or at applied research not a priority for the administration. According to a document leaked to The Guardian newspaper, NASA faces a 50% cut in its science budget that will fall on planetary research, earth science and astrophysics. Projects will be cancelled on which billions of dollars have already been spent.
In the economic boom of the post-second world war period, the dominance of US imperialism in the capitalist world, and its resultant profits, allowed it to take a longer-term view of its interests. ‘Blue skies’, pure science, research funding was seen as worth it due to possible spin-offs, even if there was no immediate pay-off. Investing in other areas of pure science with only a remote prospect of financial gain, for example planetary research or astro-physics, enhanced national prestige and soft power. The number of Nobel science prizes won, where the US dominated, showed the effectiveness of this strategy.
Leaders of the outraged US science community correctly pointed out that the long-term costs of slashing research on climate change will far outweigh any savings made now, but Trump’s reversal of the previous longer-term approach is not because he is ‘as dumb as a sack of bricks’, rather it reflects the decline of US imperialism, its profits under threat from a new rival, China. Long-term thinking is no longer a luxury it can afford, and this will not change significantly whichever capitalist leader follows the current president.
Pete Dickenson