How Biden Is Outpacing Trump on China Trade, Clean Energy, and Climate Change

On China, President Biden is taking a series of steps to explicitly contrast his trade and climate policies with those of his predecessor, Donald Trump, in the fiercely contested 2024 election campaign. If successful, Biden’s action could effectively neutralize Trump’s claims on China and trade in key industrial swing states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And Biden will also increase his lead on climate issues important to younger voters and progressives.

First, Biden is confronting China over its still-rising carbon dioxide emissions, which are now more than all the world’s developed countries combined, and nearly a third of the global total. (U.S. emissions lag far behind, at about 13%.) Biden is making a key point to climate-focused voters: that he can force China to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Otherwise, global emissions cannot be reduced to the levels scientists have discovered. It is essential to prevent climate disaster.

So Biden dispatched America’s top international climate negotiator, John Podesta, to meet China’s Liu Zhenmin in Washington to win concessions on China’s coal use. together. Bloomberg reported that, according to an unnamed U.S. official, the two envoys had in-depth discussions on “how China can seriously consider slowing the construction of new coal power plants while meeting its domestic power reliability goals” and reducing methane, a post-climate pollutant. It was reported that it was done.

The Biden administration is also expected to announce a series of large tariffs later this week on exports of Chinese clean energy technologies, such as electric vehicles and other unfair trade practices. China’s massive subsidies have continued since 2008. At the time, China invested a whopping $320 billion (as of 2008) in direct government funds into two technologies: Chinese solar panels and lithium-ion electric batteries for EVs.

This massive spending has helped China dominate the global clean energy export market, with its market share increasing from about 25% of the global market for PV solar panels and electric batteries to about 75% over the past 15 years. . China also provided massive consumer and other subsidies. For example, it provided a consumer subsidy of $10,000 per vehicle for 770,000 EVs sold in 2017.

In response to this gap, the Biden administration plans to announce a 100% tariff on imports of electric vehicles from China, according to numerous reports. “China is determined to take control of the future of the automobile market, including through unfair practices,” Biden said in February. “I’m not going to let that happen on my watch.”

These new tariffs on Chinese vehicles would far exceed the 25% tariff imposed on Chinese EVs during Trump’s presidency and maintained by Biden. However, China’s claim that U.S. subsidies are greater than Chinese clean technology subsidies is absurd. Podesta called it “beyond ironic.”

For example, in the U.S.’s 2009 stimulus package, only $2.3 billion received clean energy manufacturing tax credits, and hundreds of companies that applied did not receive any money. Thus, China provided about 150 times more funding to clean energy manufacturing than the United States in its 2008-2009 stimulus package.

Even after passage of new clean energy tax incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the total amount of U.S. support pales in comparison to more than 15 years of direct Chinese subsidies to manufacturers, consumers, and regional and local governments. Directs and controls Beijing’s economy.

By contrast, while in office, Donald Trump deliberately undermined America’s competitiveness in the entire clean energy sector, and in particular electric vehicles, at the behest of the oil giants, who again donated large sums of cash to this year’s election campaign.

In December 2019, Trump defeated a congressional effort to expand the electric vehicle tax credit beyond 200,000 units per company, a threshold that GM and Tesla had already reached. In fact, Trump opposed any EV consumer tax credit as enshrined in each federal budget proposal during his presidency, despite pleas from the auto industry, auto industry workers, industry leaders, and economists that it is key to the industry’s future. Trump’s refusal to extend EV tax credits for Tesla and GM dealt a major blow to U.S. production. This is because the two companies account for more than 60% of the U.S. market.

Now, as a 2024 candidate, Trump has gone further, promising to end all support for EVs or clean energy, despite Biden’s legislative agenda that would drive hundreds of billions of dollars in new private sector investment each year and create hundreds of thousands of jobs. Trump then met with the oil industry to demand $1 billion in campaign contributions for anti-EVs, calling it a “deal” for Big Oil.

All the evidence to the contrary is that Trump falsely claimed that Biden’s EV policy could result in a “bloodbath” for the U.S. economy. At a Michigan event in March, Trump repeatedly criticized Biden’s electric vehicle incentives, calling them “one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard” and falsely predicted they would help Chinese and Mexican automakers.

In fact, Biden has implemented a series of tax incentives that have spurred more U.S. EV private sector investment than any other region in the world. This represents a more than tripling of U.S. production over the past three years, and domestic EV sales in 2023 will surpass industry forecasts. expert. And the new tariffs Biden will propose this week would prevent unfair competition in the U.S. auto sector and prevent China from dumping cheap, subsidized fuel cars.

Whether it’s trade policy, clean energy technology or forcing other countries to act while reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, Biden has now adopted much tougher policies that will leave Trump behind in key states that will decide the election. And as usual, Trump doesn’t give a serious response.

Paul Bledsoe is a faculty lecturer at the Center for Environmental Policy at American University in Washington. He served on the staff of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Senate, the Department of the Interior, and the White House Climate Change Task Force under former President Bill Clinton.