Trump’s climate abandonment will erode US standing, particularly in the Indo-Pacific

4 March 2025

The significance of the US (re-)abandoning climate and energy transition leadership has been somewhat lost among the new Trump administration’s chaotic transgressions against international order and rational policymaking. However, the impact will be great and will be heavily concentrated in the Indo-Pacific region. US backsliding must be read as a net loss for the climate and regional stability. But the biggest loser could be the US itself. It is likely to see a comparative erosion of power and influence, largely to the benefit of China.

Other regional countries now face more complicated future choices regarding climate change and the various economic and strategic interests it influences. But changing course to suit Washington’s new direction would mean adopting an anachronistic and ultimately counterproductive perspective, one that says that climate-stabilising activities entail only sacrifice. It would ignore how climate-stabilising action can now be a source of strength, as China and the US under Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, realised.

The flawed logic of Trump’s green retreat

Trump’s flurry of first-day executive orders included a commitment to withdraw the US from the Paris Climate Agreement and related financing commitments. Trump also sought to wind back the Biden administration’s unprecedented support to American production of clean energy and related goods, largely via 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Continued Trump-aligned pursuit of US spending cuts under the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will likely also impact American climate commitments (while perhaps sparing negative effects for DOGE head Elon Musk’s Tesla).

Trump has simultaneously promised to ‘unleash’ American fossil fuel production, including in global markets. The President’s underlying logic is that climate obligations restrict US strength, while untrammelled exploitation of its relatively recent fossil fuel good fortune enhances it. But, this reasoning and related actions are flawed. For one thing, Biden’s rising support for clean energy occurred alongside record growth in US oil and gas production. This first suggests the former president should have paid more attention to ensuring that growth in clean energy utilisation came at the express cost of fossil fuel utilisation. But, it also discredits Trump’s zero-sum reading of the status quo, including his declaration of an ‘energy emergency’ in the US.

Many actions aligned with this purported emergency footing are incoherent. Pledges of continued support to US critical minerals are one example. Sustaining activity here will require continued government support to accelerate manufacturing and consumer demand for clean technologies. Trump has also put state-level Republicans in the difficult position of having to defend the attempted rollback of IRA commitments, even as their populations will suffer the most; an estimated 80 per cent of the billions in investment the IRA unlocked has gone to red states.

The risk posed by Trump’s new strategy will be most pronounced abroad, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region. Home to the world’s most rapidly developing and energy-hungry economies, it also hosts many fossil fuels and/or prospective clean energy producers whose future trajectories remain open to external influence.

Internationally, Trump has declared that American fossil fuels will “strengthen relations with allies and partners and support international peace and security”. Once again, however, the Biden administration, aided by Vladimir Putin, already presided over the most prominent realisation of this long-held American dream when surging US gas and oil shipments helped Europe better manage its decoupling from Russian energy following the Ukraine war. Yet the European example also highlighted the short-termism of fossil fuel-dominated policies. In abandoning Biden’s green pivot, Trump will be unable to support Europe’s broader and longer-term energy and broader security strategy. This involves accelerating away from fossil fuels in aggregate towards more domestic renewables, which cannot be weaponised by authoritarian countries or similarly exposed to fossil fuel pricing volatility.

The historical American view — previously exemplified by George W. Bush rejecting the Kyoto Protocol — that climate stabilising action sacrifices US strength, has always been overly simplistic and short-term thinking. It ignored how US actions to reduce global emissions would ultimately minimise economic losses and climate-linked instability. It also ignored the strategic benefits of the US leading in climate diplomacy and finance, particularly in relations with the most vulnerable states. On a related note, the long US pursuit of ‘energy independence’ — also promoted by Trump — was always misguided inasmuch as it was limited to prioritising domestic fossil fuel production. This could not wholly shield US energy consumers from exposure to global market dynamics, as Americans are again finding out that their LNG export boom leads to increased domestic gas prices.

The Trumpist perspective again ignores the well-established second-order effects of climate-damaging US policies. Yet, Trump’s assumption that any action which limits emissions limits US power is more misguided than ever. The president is overlooking what are now very viable options for Washington to help the world decarbonise while enhancing its economic success in clean energy markets and building related strategic influence. Trump envisions turning back the energy clock, which will also benefit US international relationships. But he is ignoring the degree to which other countries have realised their own economic and energy security are tied to transitioning away from fossil fuels and require reliable partners in this endeavour.

Destabilisation and diminished influence

The risk posed by Trump’s new strategy will be most pronounced abroad, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region. Home to the world’s most rapidly developing and energy-hungry economies, it also hosts many fossil fuels and/or prospective clean energy producers whose future trajectories remain open to external influence. The Indo-Pacific is also more prone to natural disasters than the global average and possesses a mix of high populations and low socio-economic development levels, which are known risk factors in climate-linked conflict. Regional countries need reliable partners to respond to these challenges and opportunities.

Given Trump’s seemingly unshakeable carbon-intensive worldview, there is reason to view his abandonment of the Paris Climate Agreement as a relative blessing. Trump’s staying in the agreement may have otherwise led to the US exerting a pro-fossil fuel influence on its deliberations. DOGE cost-cutting leading to diminished American development assistance might also be considered a comparative positive in this regard, particularly if it is accompanied by cuts to the export finance Washington provides to US companies operating in foreign markets. If the US were to retain high levels of energy-linked external spending in line with Trump’s priorities, it would invariably help lock in carbon-intensive infrastructure abroad.

This is not to say that US backsliding couldn’t still be damaging. Indonesia, for example, has openly questioned its own continued participation in the Agreement, citing a lack of fairness. It has also questioned the future availability of climate finance under mechanisms such as the Just Energy Transition Partnership — a model the US helped develop and which has also been extended to Vietnam in the Indo-Pacific. Trump has simultaneously empowered fossil fuel interests in advanced economies such as Australia to call for slower energy transitions.

Looking to the future, the US could very well pressure Indo-Pacific countries to import greater volumes of US fossil fuels, possibly in return for tariff relief, as it did in Trump’s first term. This could conceivably act as a force for climate delay by crowding out cleaner options. But, if the chaos of Trump term one’s trade deals are anything to go by, it will be difficult to disentangle net impacts.

However, the biggest barrier to Trump exporting US climate regression to the Indo-Pacific will likely be the vast economic and strategic benefits of cleaner energy and industrial activity already alluded to. The High-Level Commission on Getting Asia to Net Zero estimates that reduced fossil fuel dependence and low-cost renewables deployment could allow the region’s countries to improve their communal trade balance by up to USD 827 billion while avoiding USD 2.2 trillion in investment costs in a net zero by 2050 scenario when compared with business-as-usual activity.

Indo-Pacific countries are also actively exploring the vast economic opportunities of the green transition: India is pursuing manufacturing of numerous clean technologies and green fuels such as hydrogen, Vietnam is (an albeit distant) second to China in solar manufacturing, Indonesia has made its most significant progress in battery and electric vehicles, and Australia is seeking to further exploit its critical minerals wealth and supply the world with decarbonised metals. None of these tasks is without complication, and no country is uniformly committed to clean pursuits, but the trend of moving away from, rather than towards fossil fuels, is clear and dominates much regional partnership formation.

Widening the gap with China… and allies and partners

When Trump last abandoned climate leadership, there was speculation Beijing could fill the breach. This proved not to be the case in diplomatic terms, but China’s continued rise in green energy and industry has been remarkable since that time. In doubling down on fossil fuels, the US will continue ceding the Indo-Pacific and broader clean energy leadership to its geostrategic rival. China has its own problematic fossil fuel dependencies, largely around coal. Yet it has also outpaced all others in deploying renewables and other clean energy, electrifying sectors such as transportation, and producing clean energy technologies and their processed mineral inputs.

China’s clean energy activities will push it closer to meeting its climate goals. Tellingly, however, these activities have largely been pursued for their co-benefits. A prime motivation for China’s EV and broader electrification drive was to avoid an earlier America’s problematic overdependence on imported oil. Clean energy interests have become one of China’s primary economic growth drivers, and the investment offerings of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative — a major source of US and allied concern — have also become increasingly green in nature.

There is a strong climate-centric argument for allowing China to continue flooding the world with inexpensive and increasingly high-quality clean energy inputs. Yet the US entry into the green industrial race under Biden only enhanced global competition, helping expand American and international political will for climate action. It also began to address the risks of overconcentration of clean energy supply chains, which could eventually derail the energy transition if left unaddressed.

US allies originally criticised Biden’s IRA as economically nationalist and overly exclusionary, even in its ‘friendshoring’ phase. Yet many initial critics — such as South Korean electric vehicle automakers and Australian critical mineral producers — soon gained concessions, came to strongly support the US approach, and will lament its potential loss. Most US Indo-Pacific allies and partners have, by contrast, shown little notable response to Trump’s turn away from climate and firmly towards fossil fuels. The US leader might see this as acquiescence or fear and consider each equally valuable. Yet another potential explanation is that governments now see a need to move on from an increasingly irrelevant US in this area and to chart a new course with more appropriate regional partners.

DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.

Author biography

James Bowen is a researcher and analyst of international climate and energy policy and geopolitics. As director of ReMap Research, he consults for international NGOs and think tanks. He is also an analyst at Climate Analytics and a non-resident fellow at the Australia-India Institute. James previously worked for foreign policy think tanks in Australia, Germany, and the US. Image credit: Pexels/Ulises Castillo (edited).