ICYMI: If Donald Trump Kills America’s Clean Energy Economy, We All Lose

Lansing, Mich. – With Donald Trump in the White House and Republicans in control of Congress, we are at a critical crossroads when it comes to protecting our nation’s growing clean energy economy. If we surrender now, we will cede the future of key industries to China and other competitors.

Michigan Republican Congressman John James recently noted that “we must not neglect the sector-wide energy tax provisions that manufacturers and job creators rely on in my district and around the country.”

Doing so would be harmful to our long-term interests both nationally and here in Michigan, which has seen nearly $28 billion in new private sector clean energy investments across 74 projects that are creating or advancing more than 26,000 new jobs.

Two new pieces in the New York Times highlight the stakes of the debate over our nation’s clean energy future.

First, in a guest essay published in today’s NYT, former Michigan Governor and U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer M. Granholm takes aim at President Trump’s agenda to unwind America’s clean energy investments. Under the headline “China Will Be Thrilled if Trump Kills America’s Green Economy,” Granholm points to “nearly 1,000 new or expanded clean energy factories announced across the United States in the past four years, along with about 800,000 new manufacturing jobs — proof that America has begun a manufacturing renaissance.”

Secretary Granholm continues:

• “But you can kiss that goodbye if President Trump and the new Congress roll back the laws that made it possible. Our economic competitors are lying in wait to entice companies overseas and turn our innovation into their prosperity.”
• “There should be no confusion about why new factories are opening again: America is finally playing hardball with its economic competitors. Former President Joe Biden enacted three laws — the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act — which created tax credits, grants and loans to make it cost effective to build American products on American soil with American workers. That’s especially true of clean energy technologies like solar panels and batteries.”
• “Over the next decade, our clean energy laws could add almost $2 trillion to the U.S. economy.”
• “Yet Mr. Trump seems poised to roll back the very incentives that are reviving American manufacturing. He has promised to kill an electric vehicle tax credit that has helped save auto factories, including in my home state.”
• “This is a risky economic strategy. Other governments are waiting with bated breath for us to pare back our grants, loans and tax credits so they can use the same tools to sweet-talk the next generation of factories to their shores.”
• “Consider electric vehicles: It’s no secret China wants to dominate the global market. Today, it accounts for more than half the world’s electric vehicle production. But over 450 electric vehicle battery companies have announced they are moving to America or expanding factories here since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act — many of them leaving China to do so. It would be a national embarrassment to cede this entire industry back.”
• “If the Trump administration forces the loss of wind, solar and other clean energy jobs, we’ll lose access to the technologies that help make up our energy mix. Monthly utility bills will rise, and brownouts and blackouts will become regular experiences.”
• “Securing the next generation of U.S. manufacturing jobs will require strong government and private-sector partnerships and continued investment in domestic clean energy production. When we flipped off the lights in our offices on Monday, we left the next occupants a plan for success — already in motion. It will be up to them to decide if they want to make the most of it.”

The second article highlights the prospect that “President Trump’s repudiation of renewable-energy technologies stands to make the United States an outlier in the world” and “The United States risks further ceding a global market to China.”

• “Kelly Sims Gallagher, dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University, said the United States need not retreat aggressively from renewables, as the Trump administration vows. Doing so only cedes ground to its biggest rival, China, she said… Purely on economic and security grounds it is simply contrary to the U.S. national interest to restrict the continued growth of clean energy technologies.”

We cannot emphasize enough the importance of this debate as the new administration and Congress decide the fate of America’s clean energy policies and the investments that have already created or advanced more than 400,000 clean energy jobs across the nation.

It’s time to stand up and protect our nation’s clean energy economy and the thousands of families here in Michigan and across America who depend on these new clean energy jobs to put food on the table.

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