Overturning the subsidies would eliminate a potential U.S. export market for solar modules and batteries that could be worth as much as $50 billion by 2030, according to another analysis by researchers at Johns Hopkins University. Other countries would fill an $80 billion investment gap left by shuttered U.S. solar facilities, electric vehicle shops and battery gigafactories.
Many countries stand to benefit from the U.S. vacating the space, the Johns Hopkins researchers wrote. But governments outside the U.S. would face risks as well: Those that fail to encourage cleantech investments at home may fall even further behind China, which would likely benefit in every industrial category.
The researchers also raised the prospect of a transition of intellectual property to China. As U.S. businesses shuttered, they said, foreign companies could purchase their technical knowledge at fire-sale prices.
Trump’s barrage of tariffs against nations worldwide would limit some of the advantage countries could gain by selling clean technology to the U.S., said Tim Sahay, one of the authors of the study. Still, he said, the upshot from Trump’s policies was clear — including for European allies that had erupted in fury over Biden’s use of protectionist tax breaks to move clean energy manufacturing to the United States.
“China would be the biggest winner, but not the only winner … The rest of the world wins,” Sahay said. It’s “basically the IRA in reverse. When the IRA passed, foreigners were like, ‘Oh my God, Americans are stealing our jobs and investments because of their superior fiscal space.’ Well, now the IRA is gone, then foreigners are like, ‘Well, more for us.’”
Some conservative clean energy supporters still hope they can persuade Trump to back tax credits that have yielded solar manufacturing and battery-making plants across Republican strongholds in the Sun Belt and Rust Belt.