At the Republican National Convention in July 2024, Donald Trump repeated one of his favorite slogans: “Drill, baby drill.” Delivered to a roaring crowd of roughly 50,000 Americans in a densely packed Milwaukee arena, that applause and climate change contempt helped propel him to the White House. The rightward swing was not that surprising given inflationary pressure and a pervasive belief that pro-climate policy comes with anti-economic tradeoffs, but Trump’s re-election certainly marked the end of what was arguably the greenest US administration in history.
Much of the current “America First” energy platform is regurgitated rhetoric from Trump’s 2016 agenda, but, nearly a decade later, he is back with Elon Musk’s chainsaw—ready to shred both government bureaucracy and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations that have safeguarded American health since the 1960s. Trump’s pursuit of national energy independence wreaks of nostalgia for an imagined industrial supremacy that—while a glorification of the era during which the Cuyahoga River caught fire and New York suffocated under smog—resonates deeply with Americans who feel excluded by the green transition.
Although Trump issued a Declaration of a National Energy Emergency following his inauguration, the administration’s efforts to rectify that purported crisis are inconsistent at best and antagonistic at worst. It remains to be seen how increased tariffs on energy imports, decreased domestic investment in renewable energy sources, and a brokered deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin will remediate the “active threat to the American people from high energy prices” or help the US “insulate … from hostile foreign actors.”
The Determinants of Dominance
Since resuming his tenure in the Oval Office, President Trump has put his desire to dominate on full display, signing 92 executive orders in just two months. Five of these orders spell out the administration’s strategy for achieving US “energy dominance.” At home, dominance involves enabling new investment in oil and gas infrastructure while rolling back core elements of the previous administration’s “Green New Deal.” Abroad, Trump intends to leverage “liquid gold” as a cornerstone of his foreign policy and loyalty test for US allies and partners.
In the new Trumpian world order, friendship with America is earned—or rather, bought—for the price of long-term contracts with US exporters of liquid natural gas (LNG). The transatlantic relationship appears utterly transactional, leaving European leaders with little choice but to play Trump’s game.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen discussed replacing Europe’s lingering imports of Russian LNG with US supply on a phone call with Trump shortly after his re-election. More recently, the European Commission chief underscored the European Union’s willingness to “negotiate” with US counterparts.
The overtures prompted alarm from some senior European policymakers wary of trading decades of over-reliance on Russian gas for a similar dependence on an increasingly unstable partner. Robert Habeck, Germany’s outgoing economy and climate minister, urged caution, saying Europeans must “meet the Trump administration with an outstretched hand, but not have our hand cut off.”
US exports already account for nearly half of Europe’s total LNG imports, a remarkable rise from under 20 percent before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Trump, however, would like to see that share increase further. US LNG export capacity is expected to increase by 17 percent in 2025 and more than double by 2030, thanks to the recent reversal of a Biden-era pause on new export infrastructure. Europe’s leaders will surely face pressure to absorb some of the new US supply, but political dealings only go so far. The European Commission does not have the authority to enter into these contracts, and European utilities may be hesitant to sign long-term agreements as EU gas consumption declines and regulations tighten.
Even with the threat of tariffs, Trump’s quest for energy dominance depends on favorable market conditions and receptive buyers. US producers are most likely to benefit if Europe continues to wean itself from Russian gas imports, and yet, in a baffling show of allegiances, the Trump team is reportedly coordinating with Russian officials to restart the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. It should come as no surprise that Trump is willing to make sacrifices to support his Russian counterpart, but attempting to inject 27.5 billion cubic meters of Russian pipeline gas into the European market seems to conflict with his vision of US dominance.
Think, Baby, Think
The president’s treatment of Europe not only destabilizes the transatlantic relationship, but it also derails the progress made under the previous administration toward shared energy abundance.
The US energy supremacy that Trump craves would be better achieved through a tactical embrace of the transatlantic energy partnerships that he inherited from his predecessor. The blanket 25 percent tariffs impulsively imposed against steel and aluminum imports has killed any hope of resuscitating negotiations for the Global Arrangement on Sustainable Steel and Aluminum (GASSA). Gone, too, is American participation in the Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETP) with Indonesia, South Africa, and Vietnam, which pledged joint investments from G7+ nations to support the energy transition plans of key emerging markets.
The fate of the G7 Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII), meanwhile, remains unclear. Given the interconnectivity of material inputs for decarbonization and the needed technological transfers, friendshoring clean energy supply chains will be necessary to catch up to a well-established Chinese lead. If the US government leverages the PGII’s capacity to mobilize funding for energy and infrastructure projects abroad, the coalition could rival China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which distributed roughly $11.8 billion last year in green energy engagement.
Competition with Chinese development efforts is one reason why the G7’s pledged $600 billion investment in clean energy projects—ranging from hydropower development in Fiji to a photovoltaic solar plant in the Dominican Republic—is so crucial. Continuing to finance energy and infrastructure projects in India, Indonesia, Brazil, and Argentina could further integrate these countries into a friendshored, green economy and provide a meaningful alternative to the BRICS+ coalition led by Russia and China.
Notably, Trump has remained in one Biden-sponsored arrangement: the Mineral Security Partnership (MSP). But his open pursuit of a Greenland acquisition for US “national security” and blatant extortion of Ukrainian aid for a bilateral mining deal, prove that he is willing to resort to policy tools regarded as unthinkable until his 2024 reelection.
Even if Trump remains steadfast in his commitment to drill, it is illogical to pursue a single-pronged approach to energy sovereignty in a diversifying market. The ascension of cheap renewables has left incumbent fossil fuel firms desperate to maintain their past monopoly and exclude competitors capable of rivaling energy delivery through sustainable methods. But, as identified in a recent report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, occupying a hegemonic position in international markets “means controlling the energy systems of the future, not just the fuel sources of the past.”
Who Fills the Void?
The appetite for renewables is international and will likely be insatiable—solar added more than twice as much new electricity as coal in 2023 and has been the fastest growing source for the last 19 consecutive years. Renewables are also now cost competitive as three-quarters of new installations in 2023 were cheaper than existing fossil fuel options. As pointed out by Christiana Figueres, former head of UN climate negotiations, “last century’s outdated technologies can no longer compete with the exponential innovations and declining cost curves in renewable energy and storage.” But without buy-in from the second Trump administration, that exponential innovation will not be driven by US firms.
China already leads clean energy supply chains with dominion over upstream ingots and wafers in the silicon solar supply chain and control over critical mineral processing for rare earth metals needed in EVs and offshore wind turbines. Beyond inputs, China is also at the forefront of clean energy manufacturing; Chinese firms now have greater battery manufacturing capacity in Europe than all European firms combined. Indeed, Northvolt—Europe’s “unicorn” battery manufacturer that attracted significant European investment—has now filed for bankruptcy a second time, leaving little hope for the continent’s decoupling from Chinese batteries.
Faced with lagging industrial capacity at home and an uninterested ally in the United States, European countries may be left with little choice but to deepen ties with Chinese producers. Adair Turner, who heads the Energy Transition Commission in the United Kingdom and was previously the inaugural chairman of the UK’s Climate Change Commission, recently called for China, the EU, and the UK to form “a world apart from the US” on climate action.
That world is already taking shape. Pakistan imported 17 gigawatts of cheap Chinese solar panels in the first nine months of 2024 and Saudi Arabia purchased 9.7 gigawatts in the first seven months of 2024. But the window of opportunity for foreign US investment in renewable energy projects is not completely closed. As the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, China is still constructing domestic coal plants and has slowed BRI spending in recent years due to underwhelming returns. Ultimately, there is space for foreign direct investment in emerging markets, but the Trump administration is unlikely to engage in the kind of strategic partnerships needed to usher in another decade of US energy supremacy.
Strengthening China
The United States achieved its status as the world’s largest exporter of oil and gas through aggressive investment and innovation, not the stonewalling of emerging technologies. Refusing to engage in the clean transition will not prevent the displacement of traditional oil and gas. Instead, it will usher in a new energy hegemon that already has considerable monopolies over clean supply chain processing and manufacturing: China.
So, while Washington doubles down on drilling, Beijing will continue to “build, baby, build” as it asserts itself in the clean energy arena. In his quest for energy dominance, Trump may end up ushering in an era of US energy obsolescence.
Emily Hardy co-writes IPQ’s CARBON CRITICAL column and is a master’s student at the University of Oxford. She was a James C. Gaither Junior Fellow in the Sustainability, Climate, and Geopolitics Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Dan Helmeci co-writes IPQ’s CARBON CRITICAL column. He is a researcher and former James C. Gaither Junior Fellow in the Sustainability, Climate, and Geopolitics Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
