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Elon Musk pledged a huge campaign donation. Also, Trump is suddenly cool with electric vehicles.
Update, July 24: Elon Musk told Jordan Peterson in an interview Monday evening that “I am not donating $45 million a month to Trump,” adding that he does not belong to the former president’s “cult of personality.” Musk acknowledged, however, that helped create America PAC to promote “meritocracy and individual freedom,” and that it would support Trump while also not being “hyperpartisan.”
When former President Donald Trump addressed a crowd of non-union autoworkers in Clinton Township, Michigan, last fall, he came with a dire warning: “You’re going to lose your beautiful way of life.” President Biden’s electric vehicle transition, Trump claimed, would be “a transition to hell.”
Nearly 10 months later, Trump seems to have warmed up considerably to the idea of that hell. Despite denouncing the electric vehicle transition at countless interim rallies as a woke and all-but-certain “bloodbath” for American automakers and making endless jokes about range (including, admittedly, the banger: “The happiest moment for somebody in an electric car is the first 10 minutes … The unhappiest part is the next hour because you’re petrified that you’re not going to be finding another charger”), Trump’s tone on EVs has considerably softened in the past several weeks.
“I have no objection to the electric vehicle — the EV. I think it’s great,” Trump told Bloomberg earlier this month, shortly after promising to end Biden’s nonexistent EV mandate on “day one” in office. His improved mood still came with caveats (“They don’t go far enough; they’re very, very expensive; they’re also heavy”) but it seemed to be part of a larger trend. “I’m totally for [electric cars], whatever the market says,” Trump followed up with a crowd in Grand Rapids, Michigan, over the weekend. “And if it’s 10% of the market, 12%, 7%, 20% — whatever it is, it’s okay.”
Some of this fluctuation is normal for Trump. As Patrick George has written for Heatmap, the former president’s “knowledge of the workings of the auto industry is suspect on a good day”; when in office, Trump even hyped the now-defunct EV manufacturer Lordstown Motors.
But you don’t have to look too far for the answers to, Why this particular flip-flop? and Why now? Trump told us himself when he was in Arizona last month: “I’m a big fan of electric cars,” he said. “I’m a fan of Elon — I like Elon.” That is, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, the country’s biggest EV maker.
Bemused Tesla shareholders asked Musk about Trump’s change of heart on EVs, to which the CEO reportedly quipped, “I can be persuasive.” Trump’s new tune comes amid reports that the Tesla CEO pledged to give a new pro-Trump super PAC $45 million monthly through November. Trump isn’t even shy about hiding this link; in the same speech he claimed to be “totally for” EVs, he also bragged about the size of Musk’s donation.
Tesla shares popped 4% after Trump’s most recent comments, and the company is now big enough not to need the government subsidies that Trump would inevitably roll back. (Of course, it’s a different story for Tesla’s rivals.)
It’s not just that Trump’s support of EVs evidently has a price tag. It’s the unspoken suggestion of what other industry interests might be able to buy. You can bet fossil fuel executives haven’t missed the message — Trump has reportedly even pitched policy priorities like expanding oil drilling leases, threatening offshore wind, and undoing Biden’s protections for the Arctic behind closed doors with would-be oil and gas donors.
Voters usually want conviction and vision from their politicians—not someone taking best offers from the rich. But this is no ordinary election. Besides, there are still plenty of weeks to go until November. That’s plenty of time to change a mind.
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“I believe the tariff on copper — we’re going to make it 50%.”
President Trump announced Tuesday during a cabinet meeting that he plans to impose a hefty tax on U.S. copper imports.
“I believe the tariff on copper — we’re going to make it 50%,” he told reporters.
Copper traders and producers have anticipated tariffs on copper since Trump announced in February that his administration would investigate the national security implications of copper imports, calling the metal an “essential material for national security, economic strength, and industrial resilience.”
Trump has already imposed tariffs for similarly strategically and economically important metals such as steel and aluminum. The process for imposing these tariffs under section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 involves a finding by the Secretary of Commerce that the product being tariffed is essential to national security, and thus that the United States should be able to supply it on its own.
Copper has been referred to as the “metal of electrification” because of its centrality to a broad array of electrical technologies, including transmission lines, batteries, and electric motors. Electric vehicles contain around 180 pounds of copper on average. “Copper, scrap copper, and copper’s derivative products play a vital role in defense applications, infrastructure, and emerging technologies, including clean energy, electric vehicles, and advanced electronics,” the White House said in February.
Copper prices had risen around 25% this year through Monday. Prices for copper futures jumped by as much as 17% after the tariff announcement and are currently trading at around $5.50 a pound.
The tariffs, when implemented, could provide renewed impetus to expand copper mining in the United States. But tariffs can happen in a matter of months. A copper mine takes years to open — and that’s if investors decide to put the money toward the project in the first place. Congress took a swipe at the electric vehicle market in the U.S. last week, extinguishing subsidies for both consumers and manufacturers as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. That will undoubtedly shrink domestic demand for EV inputs like copper, which could make investors nervous about sinking years and dollars into new or expanded copper mines.
Even if the Trump administration succeeds in its efforts to accelerate permitting for and construction of new copper mines, the copper will need to be smelted and refined before it can be used, and China dominates the copper smelting and refining industry.
The U.S. produced just over 1.1 million tons of copper in 2023, with 850,000 tons being mined from ore and the balance recycled from scrap, according to United States Geological Survey data. It imported almost 900,000 tons.
With the prospect of tariffs driving up prices for domestically mined ore, the immediate beneficiaries are those who already have mines. Shares in Freeport-McMoRan, which operates seven copper mines in Arizona and New Mexico, were up over 4.5% in afternoon trading Tuesday.
“We had enough assurance that the president was going to deal with them.”
A member of the House Freedom Caucus said Wednesday that he voted to advance President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” after receiving assurances that Trump would “deal” with the Inflation Reduction Act’s clean energy tax credits – raising the specter that Trump could try to go further than the megabill to stop usage of the credits.
Representative Ralph Norman, a Republican of North Carolina, said that while IRA tax credits were once a sticking point for him, after meeting with Trump “we had enough assurance that the president was going to deal with them in his own way,” he told Eric Garcia, the Washington bureau chief of The Independent. Norman specifically cited tax credits for wind and solar energy projects, which the Senate version would phase out more slowly than House Republicans had wanted.
It’s not entirely clear what the president could do to unilaterally “deal with” tax credits already codified into law. Norman declined to answer direct questions from reporters about whether GOP holdouts like himself were seeking an executive order on the matter. But another Republican holdout on the bill, Representative Chip Roy of Texas, told reporters Wednesday that his vote was also conditional on blocking IRA “subsidies.”
“If the subsidies will flow, we’re not gonna be able to get there. If the subsidies are not gonna flow, then there might be a path," he said, according to Jake Sherman of Punchbowl News.
As of publication, Roy has still not voted on the rule that would allow the bill to proceed to the floor — one of only eight Republicans yet to formally weigh in. House Speaker Mike Johnson says he’ll, “keep the vote open for as long as it takes,” as President Trump aims to sign the giant tax package by the July 4th holiday. Norman voted to let the bill proceed to debate, and will reportedly now vote yes on it too.
Earlier Wednesday, Norman said he was “getting a handle on” whether his various misgivings could be handled by Trump via executive orders or through promises of future legislation. According to CNN, the congressman later said, “We got clarification on what’s going to be enforced. We got clarification on how the IRAs were going to be dealt with. We got clarification on the tax cuts — and still we’ll be meeting tomorrow on the specifics of it.”
Neither Norman nor Roy’s press offices responded to a request for comment.
The state’s senior senator, Thom Tillis, has been vocal about the need to maintain clean energy tax credits.
The majority of voters in North Carolina want Congress to leave the Inflation Reduction Act well enough alone, a new poll from Data for Progress finds.
The survey, which asked North Carolina voters specifically about the clean energy and climate provisions in the bill, presented respondents with a choice between two statements: “The IRA should be repealed by Congress” and “The IRA should be kept in place by Congress.” (“Don’t know” was also an option.)
The responses from voters broke down predictably along party lines, with 71% of Democrats preferring to keep the IRA in place compared to just 31% of Republicans, with half of independent voters in favor of keeping the climate law. Overall, half of North Carolina voters surveyed wanted the IRA to stick around, compared to 37% who’d rather see it go — a significant spread for a state that, prior to the passage of the climate law, was home to little in the way of clean energy development.
But North Carolina now has a lot to lose with the potential repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act, as my colleague Emily Pontecorvo has pointed out. The IRA brought more than 17,000 jobs to the state, per Climate Power, along with $20 billion in investment spread out over 34 clean energy projects. Electric vehicle and charging manufacturers in particular have flocked to the state, with Toyota investing $13.9 billion in its Liberty EV battery manufacturing facility, which opened this past April.
North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis was one of the four co-authors of a letter sent to Majority Leader John Thune in April advocating for the preservation of the law. Together, they wrote that gutting the IRA’s tax credits “would create uncertainty, jeopardizing capital allocation, long-term project planning, and job creation in the energy sector and across our broader economy.” It seems that the majority of North Carolina voters are aligned with their senator — which is lucky for him, as he’s up for reelection in 2026.