Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Politics

Here Comes Degrowth Donald

Mr. President, your commitment to radical climate and economic policy really does astound me.

Donald Trump.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Dear Mr. Trump,

What can I say? You astound me. You enthrall me. I am, in short, very impressed!

Why? Well, earlier this month, I sent you an open letter in which I confessed that I finally understood your secret plan. It’s true, I wrote, that you campaigned as a scourge of climate activists. You publicly called global warming a “hoax,” a “scam,” and something that you “don’t believe.”

Sure, that’s what you said. But, as I wrote in my letter, you have governed very differently. You are clearly terrified of climate change. Because upon being handed the reins of power, you have executed the extreme environmentalist playbook to a T.

You imposed a 10% tax on Canadian crude oil — which is the dirtiest and most carbon-intensive oil burned by Americans. You levied new fees on single-family-home building materials, putting an end to suburban sprawl. You even threatened to tax cars.

In short, you seemed to declare war on the dirty, polluting, carbon-choked American way of life.

Yet even as I sent that letter, I still had doubts. I even added a note of warning. I said that you are a much more radical environmentalist than I am — that while I want to see carbon emissions fall, I would never take the kind of extreme actions you are.

But since my last note you have plunged on. In the past few days, we’ve gotten new confirmation of just how committed you are to the radical climate agenda. You have taxed oil imports. You have declared war on cars like some kind of radical urbanist. You have hawked Teslas on the White House lawn. Even your diplomatic fights are bearing fruit: Your trade war on Canada has led to cross-border air travel falling by 70%, and your anti-European rhetoric has even started to drive down trans-Atlantic bookings now. Less tourism, fewer flights, less carbon pollution!

Last time, I called you a “Green New Donald.” Clearly that did not go far enough. You are even more opinionated, climate-crusading, and radical than I thought. You are committed to reducing the amount of stuff that Americans use — no matter where we get it from or what it does. You want to decrease the economy’s material intensity.

You, Mr. Trump, are a DEGROWTH DONALD.

And the fossil fuel industry is just starting to catch on to the extent of your fervor.

How do I know? Just look at what the oil industry itself is saying. Every quarter, the Dallas Federal Reserve asks fossil fuel executives about the state of their industry. The most recent survey came out on Wednesday, and in it those leaders do nothing but whine. They hate that you are going much further than President Biden ever went — that you are trying to drag them into bankruptcy.

“The key word to describe 2025 so far is ‘uncertainty’ and as a public company, our investors hate uncertainty. This has led to a marked increase in the implied cost of capital of our business, with public energy stocks down significantly more than oil prices over the last two,” one of them writes.

Well done, Mr. Trump! Democrats like Elizabeth Warren have long sought to raise borrowing costs for oil and gas companies through financial regulation. But you have figured out a way to actually do it with your tariff agenda.

One of the most impressive parts of your energy agenda, Mr. Trump, is that you keep calling for oil to fall to $50 a barrel. (It now trades at $69.) You must know — because you are surrounded by expert oilmen such as Energy Secretary Chris Wright — that such a low price will hand market share to OPEC and cause American oil companies nothing but pain. You must have seen that in the same Fed survey, U.S. drillers said that oil had to go for at least $61 a barrel before they could profitably drill new wells in the Permian Basin.

But you and your advisers plunge on anyway and keep insisting on that magic $50 number! You are heroes. What’s so delightful, Mr. Trump, is that this is clearly starting to irritate the oil executives who helped fund your campaign. Some of them have even started to cut their spending on future oil drilling.

“The threat of $50 oil prices by the administration has caused our firm to reduce its 2025 and 2026 capital expenditures,” writes one of them. “‘Drill, baby, drill’ does not work with $50 per barrel oil. Rigs will get dropped, employment in the oil industry will decrease, and U.S. oil production will decline as it did during COVID-19.”

Another adds: “There cannot be ‘U.S. energy dominance’ and $50 per barrel oil; those two statements are contradictory. At $50-per-barrel oil, we will see U.S. oil production start to decline immediately and likely significantly.”

Perfectly executed, Mr. Trump! They are going to keep it in the ground!!!! You have pulled off the rare rope-a-dope: Your political action groups raised more than $75 million from the oil industry to help get you elected. But now that you’re in office, you’re shutting them in. And the best part is that voters have no idea: Americans continue to think that you support U.S. oil and gas drilling — and they like it.

The most impressive comment from the oil executives, though, is this one: “I have never felt more uncertainty about our business in my entire 40-plus-year career.”

Think about that. This executive has seen the fall of Communism, the Asian crash, 9/11, the Global Financial Crisis, and the pandemic — and all of them pale next to you.

At the same time that these oil leaders are whining, you have plunged ahead with your tariffs on cars. These new fees are so complicated that many automakers are still working out exactly what they will mean for their supply chains. (More uncertainty! You dazzle me.)

But one thing is clear: They are going to raise the cost of new vehicles. “You're going to see price increases,” Ivan Drury, the director of insights at automotive research site Edmunds, toldUSA Today. “Virtually nothing goes unscathed.”

One analyst at Goldman Sachs even predicted that soon the average monthly price for a new vehicle could rise by $90. He said the tariffs are so unbelievably disruptive that there is no way they could become permanent. The hit to auto demand has already caused the steelmaker Cleveland Cliffs to lay off more than 600 steelworkers.

Mr. Trump, you really do impress me. I do worry about your popularity, though. I mean, are you trying to cause mass layoffs across the auto sector? If you keep this up, you might put the Democrats back in office — and you know what will happen then. I mean, last year, the U.S. produced more oil than any other country in history. I know you don’t want to see that happen again.

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Energy

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse on Climate, the IRA, and a Coming Political Shift

Inside Heatmap’s future of energy security event in D.C.

Jael Holtzman and Sheldon Whitehouse.
Mariah Miranda Photography

On Wednesday night in Washington, D.C., Heatmap hosted an evening of discussion on energy innovation and security, featuring special guest Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.

Guests at Heatmap's discussion on energy innovation and security.Guests at Heatmap's discussion on energy innovation and securityMariah Miranda Photography

Keep reading...Show less
Electric Vehicles

Hyundai Has Incredible Timing

The South Korean automaker just opened an EV factory in Georgia. It’ll take a lot longer for others to catch up to Trump’s latest tariffs.

EVs on an arrow.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images, Chevrolet, Hyundai

President Trump has introduced yet another round of tariffs that could upend the car industry. The newest volley in his trade war promises to slap an extra 25% tax onto any automobile imported into the U.S. It’s a measure meant to sound like a safeguard for American industry against foreign incursion. The reality, as usual, is a lot more complicated. These tariffs will punish many of the most promising EVs on the market, including those sold by Detroit.

The automotive toll of Trump’s tariffs was startling the last time around, when the administration said it would place a 25% tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico, as well as 10% on Chinese imports. That proposal was particularly problematic for the car industry because automakers use a well-established North American production pipeline to reduce costs. Lots of vehicles, whether gasoline, electric, or hybrid, are built in Mexico before being sold in the United States, while plenty of auto parts manufacturing occurs in Canada.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Energy

The Mystery of the Moss Landing Battery Fire

People near the site of the disaster say they’re sick. But officials haven’t recognized any link between those symptoms and the fire.

Moss Landing.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images, Library of Congress

People say they can still taste the metal from the Moss Landing fire. But no one in the local, state, or federal government is able to say why.

The story of Moss Landing got little attention compared to the scale of the disaster. On January 16 — days before Trump reentered office, and as fires continued to burn in and around Los Angeles, when tempers and attention spans were already strained — the Moss Landing Power Plant ignited. We still don’t know what caused the fire, but we do know a few crucial facts: Nearly all of the batteries at the 300 megawatt facility, one of the world’s largest, burned up in the fire, sending a colossal plume of black smoke soaring up from the site for days.

Keep reading...Show less