Market Data 
As President Donald Trump began his second term in office in January 2025, he signed a number of executive orders regarding the environment, heating the country’s geopolitical relations. These actions were retractions from regulations made in the second half of the third term and impacted foreign policy heavily. The new policies followed an emphasis on energy independence which resulted in further prioritization of fossil fuels, lowering renewables energy production and additional industrial pollution. Such policies were bound to raise concerns from other nations and scientists about undermining years of climate action efforts and putting public health at risk. The former Administration’s obsession with these changes led to the US being the most deregulated country in the Western World.
Environmental Policy Changes for America First Agenda
During the first day of his new term, Trump signed an executive order “Putting America First In International Environmental Agreements”, eliminating any ties left toward the handling of Trump’s first term. Under the order the United States withdrew from the Paris Agreement for the second time under Trump’s term. The executive order also erased any US expenses needed to reimburse under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and redirected those to funding to American energy programs instead. Trump further justified this decision by asserting that international climate accords were overly antagonistic towards the economic wellbeing of American industry and employment. They, however, did say that the withdrawal from such treaties adversely impacted the nation‘s diplomacy because allies’ perceptions were that the withdrawal eliminated the obligation to contribute to mitigating the climate change issue.
Removing Domestic Climate Policies
Repealing executive orders of the previous administration dealing with environment management, especially the ones focusing on emission of greenhouse gases and the use of renewable energy, was the first order of business. This included lowering regulations on vehicle emissions, increasing the time limit for switching to electric cars, and changing policies on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. The EPA was ordered to consider removal of rules considered unnecessarily restrictive on the fossil fuel sector, resulting in greater production of coal, oil, and natural gas. This was a radical deviation from the American policy on climate change that has been globalized; it shifted American spending away from $20 billion fossil fuel environmental funds toward greatly stimulating domestic oil and gas and spending on manufacturing.
Not only did the administration introduce new policies, but they also updated policies allowing higher methane emissions, which is a more powerful greenhouse gas. The oil and gas industry had doubted the need for robust monitoring and mitigation strategies for case methane gas being released into the atmosphere, as that policy shift caused depression of climate change. Moreover, the administration’s focus on energy dominance further fuelled the expansion of anti-environmental policies aimed at drilling in previously protected federal land, such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), which greatly fed resistance from environmentalists.
Shifting Focus Away from Research and Climate Science
As one of the steps toward further deregulation, the administration cut down funding toward climate science and research significantly. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) was blanked with a stop order toward funding for the climate health consequences research, which includes but is not limited to wildfire and heat stress and virus so called “mosquitoes” diseases. Budget cuts were also funnelled to Earth Science Division at National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), who control satellite surveillance on global warming and ice sheet decline. Such actions brought criticism from scientists who had to cope with the consequences of climate change besides existing effects on the ecosystem and public health.
Federal policy discussions about the environment were cleaned of any climate-related assets the government had. Important federal agency websites no longer contained information asset such as, temperature forecasts, extreme weather patterns, and even the rising of the sea levels. As a result, researchers were unable to understand the set and scope of environmental problems America was facing.
Effects on Clean Technology and Renewable Energy
These clean policies had a negative impact on the renewable energy industry. The imported solar panels, as well as wind turbine, tariffs increased the cost of a variety of projects, causing their never-ending delays and cancellation. The lowering of environmental regulations alongside the trust given on the fossil fuels set a high competitive market in which low fossil fuel subsidized renewable energy companies were unable to compete with. In turn, money put into wind and solar energy along with battery storage systems, froze and companies that expanded the green energy systems bore heavy financial burdens.
In addition, the developing rate of green technology was impeded due to the elimination of tax incentives for the research of clean energy and electric vehicles (EVs). Although many states with advanced energy policies tried to mitigate these rollbacks, the absence of federal assistance greatly impeded any progress made towards decreasing carbon emissions.
Legal and Public Dissatisfaction
The United States EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) Employees that used to work and have paid jobs at other branches of the United States’ government staged sit-in strikes as a response to budget cuts and layoffs. They fought back while constantly repeating their claims that the cuts posed major risks to public health and the global environment. Climate change defenders and environmental activists, in addition to states advocated by the Democratic Party, attempted to take legal action against some partial steps that were taken by Trump’s administration, maintaining them as violent towards the environment and public welfare.
Legal disputes were strongest in California, the very first state to authorize rigorous emissions limits on car models. The state of California asked the Trump administration to hand back their waiver from the Clean Air Act which was instantly challenged by a number of states. The legal dispute led to California advancing the case the set of states decided to combine legislation to overthrow the case. At the same time, eco establishment sued Washington for the legal act of relaxing the criteria to protect workers in danger and shutting down wetland fishable waters. That decision fell under the jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act.
Only a limited number of the policies were blocked from being executed, the rest were united under a single method for regulation and later swapped out, in spite of all the bills that were contested, that evolved into one other.
Global Effects And Long-Term Impact
The combined effect of these policies have contributed to heightened greenhouse gas emissions and decreased the U.S.’s participation in global climate leadership. The withdrawal from international covenants and the relaxation of domestic policies impeded attempts to address the climate change on a global scale. Here in America, the focus on fossil fuels coupled with increased laxity on the environment raised worries over adverse impacts on public health, environmental degradation, and economic vulnerability due to climate disasters.
In addition, the administration’s support for fossil fuel development also antagonized other sympathetic countries in the European Union, Canada, and Japan. These nations retaliated by placing carbon tariffs on American goods, claiming that the U.S. was conducting trade in a discriminatory manner by failing to honour climate obligations. As a result, American exporters bore the brunt of increased costs while the U.S. was made weaker economically in terms of competition for the clean energy market.
Conclusion
In the second Trump term, America’s attitude to climate change and its protection, as well as its policies on achieving clean and sustainable energy, changed greatly. The set of policy decisions taken in the years leading up to 2020 poses a ghastly challenge to achieving the emission targets set for the year 2030, thus depicting how economic growth can be achieved now at the expense of future environmental damage. The “America First” strategy seeking to boost the economy through deregulation profoundly weakened environmental policies.
While the U.S. circles along with the rest of the world is trying to tackle climate change, the impact from these set of policies stand testimony to why taking care of the environment is crucial for sustaining the world’s ecology. Undoing the harms inflicted by these policies require a fundamental change in how they are dealt with alongside putting more resources into renewable energy and opening the two-party system to work together for climate change. Whether these future governments can get American politics are well-poised to remain to be seen.
[Photo by the White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons]
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.
Rajdeep Dey is a geopolitical risk analyst specializing in Indo-Pacific security, trade policy, and ESG analysis. He has worked with the Centre for Air Power Studies and contributed to scenario analysis on global energy and trade policies.
Read the full article here
