U.S.–China Competition in the Age of Trump’s Energy Law

Once, climate and clean energy were common ground between the United States and China, most notably in the lead-up to the 2015 Paris Agreement. In the years since, cooperation has given way to competition. China has emerged as the global leader in clean energy manufacturing, while the U.S.—under the Biden administration—moved to catch up through the Inflation Reduction Act.

Now, President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act has set a very different course. The law rolls back many clean energy incentives, puts new emphasis on fossil fuels and emerging technologies like advanced nuclear and certain hydrogen sources, and sharpens trade and supply chain tensions with China through expanded tariffs and Foreign Entity of Concern restrictions.

What does this shift mean for U.S.–China relations, American competitiveness, and the global energy transition?

Scott Moore, faculty fellow at the Kleinman Center and director of China programs and strategic initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania, joins Energy Policy Now to unpack the stakes. A leading expert on U.S.–China relations, Moore offers perspective on how Trump’s policies could reshape the balance of power between the world’s two largest economies.

Full Transcript

Andy Stone: Welcome to the Energy Policy Now podcast from the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. I’m Andy Stone. Not long ago, climate and clean energy were areas of cooperation between the United States and China, most dramatically in the lead up to the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. In the years since, that cooperation has diverged into competition. China has established itself as the global leader in clean energy manufacturing, while the United States, during the Biden administration, sought to catch up through the Inflation Reduction Act.

Now, President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act has charted a new course. The law rolls back many clean energy incentives, and places new emphasis on fossil fuels, and on emerging technologies such as advanced nuclear and certain sources of hydrogen. At the same time, the laws deepened foreign entity of concern provisions, and a new wave of tariffs heightened tension between the US and China over critical minerals, batteries, and clean energy supply chains.

So what does this new policy direction mean for US China relations for America’s global competitiveness and for the global energy transition? Joining me to discuss the issues is Scott Moore, Director of China Programs and Strategic Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania. Scott is an expert on US China relations, and he offers his perspective on how Trump’s energy and climate policies may shape the balance of power between the world’s two largest economies. Scott, welcome back to the podcast.

Scott Moore: Thanks so much, Andy. Great to be with you.

Stone: So your 2022 book, China’s Next Act, which we discussed on this podcast, explored how China’s domestic challenges are likely to shape its global role in the future. And in the book, you wrote that climate was one of the few remaining constructive areas of US China engagement at that time. Today, we have Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, and it’s expanded foreign entity of concern provisions that I think, in many people’s minds, highlight the increasingly adversarial nature of US China relations today. So my first question to you is, to what extent does the idea that climate is a point of engagement between the two countries still hold?

Moore: Well, thanks very much, Andy, and I do think the need for some type of cooperation between the US and China on climate definitely still holds. But as you pointed out, what has changed is the willingness on both sides to actually do that. And in particular, what’s changed on the US side is the sense that, and this was really what I wrote about in China’s Next Act, is the sense that there’s really a desire to compete with China in the development of clean energy technology, when during the Biden administration and when I was writing the book, I think there was much more of a sense that we might be able to foster kind of a race to the top, if you will, or kind of virtuous competition that might lead to more and better clean energy production.

What has really changed with the advent of the second Trump administration is the sense that actually it’s not really a priority to compete with China in clean energy, and sort of essentially to see that that industry primarily to Chinese manufacturers, but the basic need for some type of cooperation still stands. As every listener of this podcast will know, the global energy transition has not stopped, and climate change certainly has not stopped. So the need for some type of cooperation hasn’t stopped either. I think what this means is that we just have to look beyond kind of national government levels for that cooperation to happen, and universities, the private sector, etcetera.

Stone: So qualitatively, I mean, on the bare bones, we’ve got this shift in policy from the IRA to the OBBBA. I hope I got the right number of B’s in there. Qualitatively, you know, does this kind of really reflect a larger new phase in US China relations?

Moore: I’m not sure about sort of in US China relations as a whole, and particularly as it relates to OBBBA. Yeah, that’s a — you trip over that one, don’t you? I think what does kind of set a little bit of a new phase for US China relations are tariffs. The widespread rollout of those tariffs, I think, does create a new context for US China relations, and China has been very — probably the most — kind of mounted the most aggressive response of any economy so far to the Trump administration’s tariffs.

You mentioned critical minerals, and let me just spend a moment on that, because that’s really where the crux of US China kind of trade conflict lies, especially in the clean energy domain. So pretty soon after the Trump administration took office, China pulled the trigger on a long standing or long planned export control regime, which, for the first time, really gave the Chinese government kind of the ability to place export controls on critical minerals, which is significant because China, for the moment, controls most of the mining and refining of most of the critical minerals that are necessary for wind turbines, batteries, you know, and pretty much everything else in the clean energy domain. So that is a really significant lever that China was able to to institute. And it actually, you know, did have a pretty significant effect back in April, where it was widely sort of credited, that move, as being a component of the Trump administration pulling back on its initial China tariffs and giving extensions and, frankly, concessions.

Stone: Well, so talking about those tariffs for just a moment. Tariffs aren’t anything new. There were tariffs under the Biden administration. I believe those tariffs actually initially on clean energy started under the Obama administration. Can you give us a little bit more color, specifically, just before we go further with the conversation, what specifically are the tariff changes related to clean energy that we’re seeing right now? How significant are those, again, compared to what we saw under Biden and, I guess, in the Trump one?

Moore: Yeah, and you’re absolutely right. So it is, I think, important to kind of clarify there that these, with respect to clean energy in particular, you’re absolutely right, tariffs have been around for about a decade on various Chinese clean energy imports, and during the Biden administration, those tariffs were increased very substantially. And interestingly, in my view, very counterproductively from a climate standpoint, the Biden administration imposed tariffs on solar panels that were manufactured by Chinese firms in third countries, in Southeast Asia, and then were re-exported, which had been where most of the production had shifted following the the institution of earlier tariffs during the first Trump administration.

The Biden administration imposed tariffs on those kind of secondary exports, and that sharply increased the price of solar panels in the US, because so much of the US supply actually did still depend on re-exported goods from China. So you’re absolutely right that, you know, the kind of shift in terms of clean energy and tariffs is not a function of the second Trump administration but what is a function of the second Trump administration is the imposition of these really high across the board tariffs on, you know, virtually all Chinese imports. And that is really what has had the large scale effect on US China relations. So I would just sort of distinguish there between kind of, you know, the effect on US China relations and the effect on clean energy specifically.

Stone: Talking about the Biden years a little bit more here. During those years, the US seemed to be moving directly into clean energy areas where China dominates, from solar to batteries. Did the IRA and the Biden policies generally put the two countries on parallel paths? I mean, were they both committed to these technologies and goods and similarly trying to become leaders in these markets, or is that kind of an oversimplification of what was going on?

Moore: I mean, it may be a slight oversimplification, but I don’t think an unfair one. I think, yeah, essentially that was the intention of the IRA. I mean, really, I think if you, you know, sort of boil the IRA’s climate and energy provisions down, it was an effort to kind of triangulate between a climate problem, which is that, you know, the US had a policy goal under the Biden administration to sharply reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, and to do that, you need a lot more wind and solar. So to triangulate that kind of climate problem with a political problem, which is that, you know, relying on relatively inexpensive Chinese imports that don’t produce or create American jobs is not politically popular, while certainly creating American jobs is. And then a geopolitical problem of not wanting to be reliant on Chinese technology, and in particular, inputs from critical minerals and things like that that can be easily disrupted in a time of conflict.

And again, that’s essentially what we saw with China’s imposition of export controls a few months ago. So the IRA is really an effort to triangulate between climate political and geopolitical goals there, and I think was pretty successful in doing that. It was politically popular, passed with, you know, some bipartisan support, which is a lot, you know, it’s not a small accomplishment in the political context of the last few years. So really quite, quite successful. But yeah, placed, I would say, the US on a largely parallel track to China in an effort to develop primarily a US centric supply chain for clean energy technology.

Stone: In a conversation that you and I had a few weeks ago, you commented that US solar manufacturing may never be competitive against China, given China’s structural cost advantages, and that’s even if we’re factoring in things like the IRA. And you also noted that solar is only about one percent or so of China’s exports. What do these two points tell us, in your view, about America’s effort to go head to head in these industries, and whether it was ever realistic?

Moore: Yeah, well, and I do think that’s an important question. And I think if there’s, you know, kind of a maybe economic justification for the Big Beautiful Bill’s rollback of policy support for wind and solar, it may be that, that it’s hard to imagine US firms ever really being, you know, fully cost competitive in wind and solar. And simply because of the structural cost advantages that Chinese firms have that you mentioned, you know, they have the sort of vertically integrated market access to critical minerals involved in production of of wind and solar. The economies of scale are hard to beat. There’s just a lot of cost structures that would be really hard to match.

I mean, on the other side, the policy argument, I think, for the IRA, is that, you know, well, we’re not just concerned about the sticker price of a wind turbine or a solar panel. We do also care where the employment effects are being generated. And so maybe it is worth, you know, infusing some taxpayer money for those panels to be made in Nebraska instead of southern China. So that’s, you know — those are the sort of competing arguments. And I think the validity of those really just come down to, how much are you prioritizing getting as much renewable energy into the grid as as quickly and cheaply as possible, versus trying to simultaneously pursue climate employment and other objectives?

Stone: Well, those are huge future industries, and it would make sense to establish employment. You know, industries that drive employment in those industries not to lose that opportunity. You know, but I want to go back to something that you mentioned a moment ago, and I don’t want to underplay it. Beyond the economics and the job opportunities that these new energy industries would provide to United States, there is that national security component, you just said it, and I think that was probably a lot of what the Biden administration was thinking as well, These industries, clean energy, I think, is an inevitability. The Trump administration may not agree with that statement, but I think it is — it’s really not a question of if it’s a question of when, and when solar, EVs, etcetera, become a even bigger part of the US economy. It would make sense to ensure that as much of that supply chain is in the United States or amongst our closest allies for, again, national security and energy security reasons.

Moore: Yes, I mean, I think that is a very strong argument, although I would sort of put a little asterisk there. If you really are sort of concerned primarily or largely on national security kind of grounds, I certainly see the justification there for banning Huawei equipment in US telecommunications infrastructure, for example. That seems pretty clear cut to me. Importing a solar panel seems a little less clear cut to me in terms of the national security kind of rationale for that.

A solar panel is a pretty simple piece of technology. Yes, you could theoretically embed, you know, kind of back doors and stuff that in a, you know, kind of digitally enabled grid may create some vulnerabilities, but if you really wanted to do something like that, you don’t need a solar panel to do it. It’s a pretty kind of low tech device, and as you alluded to earlier, it actually is not economically a hugely important industry. The margins on solar panels are pretty thin. And for China, the solar panel industry is equivalent to only about one percent of the value of its total exports, which is not nothing, but it’s certainly not, you know, driving China’s economic growth.  So just to say that, you know, I think on these kind of economic and national security grounds, I think it’s kind of a fair fight in terms of how you might weigh those versus the climate benefits of increasing renewables penetration using — and Chinese produced solar does tend to be the cheapest, and also boosting resilience in the grid through increased renewables penetration.

Stone: Well, I think also on the national security point, I was also pointing to the fact that, you know, as the economy becomes increasingly electrified, and as we, you know, see the criticality of the AI boom, right? That, if we are relying on clean energy, we want to make sure the supply chains are reliable, right? So I think that’s part of the idea as well.

Moore: Yeah, yeah, that’s certainly fair. Although, you know, I would also say kind of even there, there are some things you can do. Actually, one of my colleagues and I had a paper come out last month in which we looked at lithium ion battery supply chains. And one thing you can do to significantly reduce dependence on imported batteries principally from China is simply to do more with recycling those batteries.

Stone: So with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Trump has stepped back from renewables and storage, and He’s doubled down on fossil fuels, critical minerals, as we said, and new technologies like SMRs and hydrogen. What’s your summation, then, of his energy strategy? Is this about energy dominance security? What’s your overall view of what he’s trying to get at?

Moore: So I think — if I could just sort of like put it in a sentence, I think it’s basically that, look, for now, as things kind of currently stand, the US is better positioned in fossil fuel production than it is clean energy manufacturing, especially wind and solar. And therefore, it makes the most sense for the US to gain — you know, to hold on to as much of the fossil fuel market as it can for as long as it can. So embedded in that are a couple of assumptions which I think you can question, but which, frankly, I don’t think are crazy.

Assumption number one, we’re going to continue to use fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. Again, from a climate perspective, that’s not great. We should not be doing that. But realistically, that will probably be true at least for some applications. The main question is just how long we’re talking about and at what volume. Assumption number two is that it is very difficult, if not impossible, for US manufacturers to match Chinese competitors in wind and solar technology, particularly. Again, I don’t think that’s a terrible assumption on its face, but again, kind of going back to our discussion, I think you can certainly envision a good policy argument for investing in US based manufacturing of those technologies if you also consider, you know, driving employment, developing, as you kind of alluded to, kind of a backup production capability if we’re really concerned about, you know, relying on Chinese imports.

Stone: So the overall strategy there would be, take advantage of the energy resources that we have, that we can produce abundantly and cheaply, use that cheap energy to drive industrial development, and create industrial and energy dominance that way. Is that kind of summing it up?

Moore: Yes, that’s how I would characterize it. I would also, you know, just kind of point out, though, that if — you know, in terms of wind and solar, really, how I would characterize the administration’s position is that, well, look, if you want to go, you know, build wind and solar, you can do that. We’re just not going to provide any policy support for you to do it. We are not going to advantage that in any way, which is a huge shift from, obviously, the Biden administration, but even, really, to some degree, you know, the first Trump administration, and certainly again in the Obama administration.

Stone: Well, I’d argue it’s not quite so innocuous, particularly what we’re seeing with the aggressive moves to stop the offshore wind industry in this country. And there was an announcement several days ago that development of — you know, any money that’s going to offshore staging ports is now going to be taken away as well. I mean, that’s obviously that funding issue, but I think it’s been much more aggressive, not just a passive, oh, we’re just not going to provide you with money.

Moore: You’re right. I mean, if you kind of step back and look at the kind of overall policy. I guess, though, if you focus on just the Big Beautiful Bill Act, I would argue that that’s really what the takeaway is, is that we’re just not going to provide, you know, policy support for that. But you’re absolutely right that in, you know, broader context, and then you get into, like, the endangerment finding. And, I mean, it’s pretty clear that the administration is seeking to completely dismantle their, you know, kind of regulatory framework for advantaging clean energy.

Stone: You know, in that Trump strategy, there are some pretty hard to reconcile contradictions. And you know, the administration is pushing domestic mineral mining. For example, the recent Department of Defense taking of a 15 percent stake in the Mountain Pass Rare Earth Mine in California being a prime example of that. At the same time, the administration doesn’t seem to aggressively be pushing the midstream the processing of these minerals, which is where China is quite dominant. How do you make sense of that? What vulnerabilities does that create?

Moore: I think the short answer is because it’s actually easier just to increase production in the case of critical minerals, meaning mining. It’s much harder to replicate the refining and the processing in the midstream, as you pointed out. And the reason for that primarily is that it’s just an extremely, highly polluting, highly toxic process of refining and separating these critical minerals. So you know, that’s really the reason that the industry shifted to China in the first place, 25, 30 years ago, and why it would be exceptionally hard to really recreate it.

Not impossible. You certainly could, you know, if you threw enough money at it, and, frankly, relaxed, you know, environmental standards and environmental health regulations far enough. You could, but it’s very difficult. And that’s really the main impediment. It is also true that Chinese firms, really again, have pretty significant cost advantages in those midstream segments that would, you know, be hard to beat on economic grounds. But again, if we’re principally concerned about kind of, you know, sovereign capabilities, resilience, energy security, you could certainly kind of equalize that with policy support and with subsidy.

Stone: And I want to take a look for a moment at the two countries’s respective electric grids, right, which I think is also a telling point here. So China is scaling renewables at really a breakneck pace. Last year, China installed about 280 gigawatts of new solar generating capacity, and that is about a fifth of the total US grid as it exists today, just to put it into perspective. At the same time, China is still expanding its coal fired generation fleet, in part, to serve as backup to its growing intermittent clean energy generating fleet.

So China, you know, appears to be taking a very diversified approach to its grid. In contrast, US federal policy under Trump is stepping back from renewables, as we’ve already talked about, and really putting its eggs in the basket of fossil fuels and technologies like small modular reactors and blue hydrogen that really have not been proven at all at scale. So side by side, how do these two strategies, China’s all of the above approach, versus Trump’s focus on developing certain technologies, some key ones of which have not really yet been proven at scale, how do they compare in terms of the forward looking competitiveness and sustainability of these systems?

Moore: Maybe just, first of all, I think it’s worth kind of keying in on this point about what the Big Beautiful Bill Act kind of does and doesn’t do to different clean energy, and we’ve already talked about it certainly de-prioritizes wind and solar. And it’s a very interesting question why. I actually was having a conversation with — at a climate event earlier this week with a Penn colleague, and we were sort of mulling over maybe how to try to answer that question through some future research, in terms of why exactly wind and solar, you know, were so obviously de-prioritized in Big Beautiful Bill, while other clean energy technologies, actually in some cases, received a boost in policy support.

And you already alluded to a couple of them. Hydrogen, geothermal, nuclear, for example. So it is important to acknowledge that there is investment in some of these clean energy technologies. As you pointed out, tend to be the pre-commercial ones, as opposed to wind and solar. Now there is an economic argument for that. You need more policy support for pre-commercial technology than post. That kind of, you know, brings you over to talking about China. China has unparalleled economies of scale in wind and solar. It is absolutely fully commercialized technology, and that’s why you see it being built out at such a torrid pace.

It is typically the cheapest form of new capacity that’s being fed into China’s electricity grid. Probably cheaper, in most all cases, than coal. The reason China is pursuing an all of the above strategy, as you pointed out, is that storage really lags installed capacity. So at present, you just — even with all of this new renewable capacity in the grid, you still can’t fully satisfy grid assurance through that without sufficient storage. And so the fossil generation capacity, and to some degree, the nuclear generation capacity is being put in there to help buffer that and provide that assurance.

It’s also worth mentioning that China continues to build vast amounts of hydro and is building out pretty much the last remaining large hydro sites that it has left, including one in the Himalayas that’s causing quite a bit of tension with India, for example. And the reason it’s doing that is because hydro is obviously, for the most part, fossil free, very low carbon, certainly generation technology, but it does help to provide more of that grid assurance than wind and solar currently does. So China’s approach, you know, is certainly all of the above. It’s mostly all of the above for energy security reasons. And I think our approach, the US approach, is more tilted towards fossil fuels, and I think, frankly, is driven more by domestic politics than, you know, energy security objectives, as in the case of China.

Stone: I want to take a step back just for a moment and ask you about China’s response to Trump’s policies in particular. I mean, obviously OBBBA is domestically focused mostly, but we’ve got the FEOC provisions, we’ve got the tariffs. Is China mounting its own coherent response to this? To what extent does China feel a need to respond to this or keep going as it is?

Moore: I think primarily it’s keep going as it is. China hasn’t, I would say, taken, you know, really direct swipes at the US kind of retreat from clean energy, climate, but it certainly has stepped up its own efforts to promote exports of its own clean energy technology, and it’s continued to emphasize climate in its diplomatic engagements. We saw that pretty dramatically, actually, in a state visit by Brazil’s President Lula to Beijing a few months ago, where they talked quite a bit about climate and clean energy with Xi Jinping. And in part, that’s because Brazil will host this year’s UN Climate Conference. But it’s pretty clear to me that China is really leaning into kind of its leadership in clean energy and climate policy more generally, drawing an obvious, if still implicit, contrast with the US under the Trump administration.

Stone: So Scott, interesting, you just talked about China, global climate, and obviously, the US has disengaged from the global climate dialogue. Trump has pulled us out of the Paris Agreement. I want to ask you, what opportunities does this potentially present to China in terms of global diplomatic leadership on climate in terms of, I guess, even the ability for China to define new markets for its climate technologies based upon that leadership? We’d love to hear your thoughts on that generally.

Moore: Thanks for that question, Andy. I do think it’s a good and important one in our current moment. And beyond what we’ve talked about about, sort of, you know, US versus Chinese clean energy technology, there is this important kind of what it means for diplomacy and global leadership and America’s role in the world. I had the opportunity to do a secondment in the US government recently. I returned to Penn fully in February of last year. And one of my takeaways from that experience is that there’s a really broad swath of countries, many of which are strategically very important to the United States, countries like Pacific Island states, where frankly, if there were to be some type of conflict over Taiwan or whatever, the US would need to rely on bases and access to a lot of those countries’s territory.

In any event, those countries really want to talk about climate change with the United States, and they want to talk about climate change because it’s a strategic threat to their development and their populations. Again, this is, you know, really evident in the case of the Pacific Island states, where it’s kind of an existential threat. But it’s also true of countries like Vietnam, where climate is a significant factor in complicating Vietnam’s development pathway. It’s facing challenges that it really has never faced in its modern history, things like severe drought in the Mekong Delta. That’s something that that’s never happened in the history of Vietnam as a modern state, and is is really a result of climate change, principally.

So climate is a something that countries want to talk to the US about, and if we’re not equipped to do so, it really does remove a whole kind of channel of diplomatic engagement with some very strategically important countries. And of course, you know, this is also true of our European partners and allies. And as you pointed out at the outset, it was even true with China, you know, not so long ago, where climate was an important channel for diplomatic dialogue. Removing that, not really being willing to even talk about climate change, but also not having anything to say, because we have no domestic policies to speak of that support climate action does leave a massive hole in US leadership and diplomacy, and I do think we will come to regret that in the years to come, as we inevitably will need things from other countries, whether it’s — you know, and one certainly hopes it’s not, but whether it’s basing, you know, access and rights in the South Pacific, or whether it’s, you know, some emerging technology cooperation with European countries. I think we’re going to come to regret the inability to talk or say or do anything about climate change from a diplomatic and global leadership standpoint.

Stone: Let’s shift back here to the Big Beautiful Bill, and its related policy levers, tariffs, etcetera. You know, we don’t yet know how Trump’s policies in this area will play out. Maybe they will succeed in providing the US with the abundant and cheap energy that fuels, you know, the wave of industrial development that is one of the administration’s goals. What should we be looking at or watching out for most closely to see where the strategy leads to it leading to energy dominance and independence, whether it succeeds or fails at that?

Moore: Let me just sort of focus foremost on sort of the climate picture. I think, you know, success is if we can really develop and commercialize some of these other clean energy technologies that we talked about. Hydrogen economy. If we can really, you know, rapidly expand deployment of geothermal, for example, which, you know, listen, like, if that can happen, that will be really significant from a climate and energy standpoint. So I certainly hope that that’s what the Big Beautiful Bill Act does on the climate front. And if it does, I’ll celebrate it. And that’s really what success, I think, looks like there.

I think, beyond that, in, you know, sort of economic and energy security terms, if we can continue to find ways to provide assurance to the grid, and that also reduces dependence on fossil fuels, so, you know, nuclear stands out there, then I think that’s also a real win. It’s not exactly the question you asked, but something that, you know, just does occur to me is, is the Big Beautiful Bill going to really set the tone for our energy policy for the foreseeable future? And I’m not sure. It’s a very interesting counterfactual.

If we hadn’t had such severe inflation, for example, would the IRA and bipartisan infrastructure law, would that — and to some degree, the Chips Act as well, would that have influenced voter behavior more in the 2024 election? I don’t think we’ll — you know, that’s a counterfactual that we’ll never know the answer to. But it would be interesting to — it’ll be interesting to see in the ’26 election, possibly the ‘28 election, is there some backlash to some of the cuts and rollbacks that the Big Beautiful Bill Act has made? I don’t think we’re going to be able to target specifically, you know, how voters feel about the clean energy parts of that, but I think we may be able to see an effect electorally, and that’ll be very interesting, I think, in terms of will we — you know, will the pendulum kind of swing back in future political moments in the United States?

Stone: That’s what this politics in this country is all about in the last decade or two. It’s all about the pendulum swinging. And, you know, looking back, I think what you’re saying, just to make sure I understood, you know, on the IRA policies, if the IRA had come about in a non-inflationary environment, would inflation not have been able to have been used as a political tool against all these policies?

Moore: And would the sort of Biden administration argument really have been vindicated, which is essentially that, by investing in, you know, clean energy and a sustainable kind of economic structure, but that benefits American workers, that’s, you know, generating growth in American industry, that argument may have been validated, but we’ll never know, because, you know, I think it was just totally — if that argument did resonate with voters, it was totally swamped by inflation.

Stone: All right, Scott, so for a final question here, and this is a bit of a broad one, so I’ll let you take it where you want, but you know, what do you think that Trump’s policy and China’s response to it mean for the future of US China relations?

Moore: So I think the biggest thing, Andy, you know, at least in our kind of clean energy space that we’re concerned with here, is that I think we’re going to have regional divergence in energy systems. I think we, you know, kind of tend to think about the global energy transition as something that is going to sort of be a — you know, maybe not exactly universal, but kind of a common process across the world of, you know, we’re going to move away from fossil fuel infrastructure and towards renewables.

But I think what the consequence of this is going to be, these developments are going to be, is that we’re going to see a lot more regional fragmentation of the energy transition. It seems pretty clear that East Asia, you know, including China, but also including probably South Korea, possibly Japan, Singapore, is going to be the first region to mostly, or even fully electrify, where we’ll have at least the technical infrastructure to potentially power, you know, the vast majority of energy use through non-fossil energy sources. And I think it’s going to take a lot longer now, or at least somewhat longer now, for the US and North America to electrify than it did prior to the second Trump administration and the advent of kind of this recalibration of the policy emphasis of fossil fuels versus non-fossil that we’ve talked about earlier.

Stone: Scott, thanks very much for talking.

Moore: Thank you, Andy.

Stone: Today’s guest has been Scott Moore, Director of China Programs and Strategic Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania. For more podcasts as well as the latest Energy Policy Research blogs and events from the Kleinman Center, visit our website. Our address is KleinmanEnergy.upenn.edu Thanks for listening to Energy Policy Now and have a great day.