Plans by former President Donald Trump to gut President Biden’s climate-and-spending law if he returns to the White House have made strange bedfellows of big corporations and Democrats.
The fossil fuel sector and automakers oppose getting rid of tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that buoy their bottom lines, creating possible headwinds for Mr. Trump’s aspirations to roll back Mr. Biden’s green-energy agenda.
American Petroleum Institute President and CEO Mike Sommers, whose lobby group typically aligns with Republicans on energy policies, said the law has tax provisions that the oil and natural gas industry “supported vigorously.”
“There are a lot of provisions within the IRA that this industry supports,” Mr. Sommers recently told reporters. “We will support those, no matter who the president of the United States is.”
Those provisions include tax credits for clean hydrogen production, and carbon capture and storage, the process by which emissions are stored underground rather than released into the air.
Mr. Sommers described the carbon-capture credits as “historic.”
SEE ALSO: 16 Republican governors tell Biden to drop ‘unrealistic’ EV mandate
“Those are very important to this industry,” Mr. Sommers said.
Automakers Nissan and General Motors have also sounded the alarm over nixing the IRA’s electric-vehicle tax credits that include incentives for manufacturers to ramp up domestic minerals production for EV batteries and up to $7,500 in tax credits for EV buyers.
In remarks to the Financial Times published this month, the companies said the tax breaks have buoyed EV sales in the U.S. market. Domestic demand for EVs has grown at a slower-than-expected pace, which the auto industry and analysts say underscores the need for tax incentives.
“We don’t want to end up saying this vehicle program is really good with the IRA, only to have the IRA go away, and now suddenly, the vehicle can’t make money,” GM CFO Paul Jacobson said.
Makoto Uchida, chief executive of Nissan, which has two U.S. plants, said the “penetration of EVs will be much more promising” with the IRA.
Spokespeople for Mr. Trump’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
The Republican presidential frontrunner on the campaign trail has repeatedly expressed a desire to overhaul Mr. Biden’s $360 billion climate law.
His remaining GOP rival, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, has also vowed to put Mr. Biden’s clean energy spending on the chopping block.
While a Republican president would need congressional approval to entirely dismantle the IRA, presidents and their administrations would have broad executive powers over its implementation and handling of tax credits.
Under Mr. Biden, the law has survived attempts by congressional Republicans to roll back parts of it.
Mr. Sommers emphasized there are plenty of other provisions in the IRA that Big Oil dislikes and would support repealing, such as the fee for excess methane emissions from oil and natural gas facilities.
“We’ll work with whoever’s president of the United States to ensure that we have a robust energy future,” he said.
• Ramsey Touchberry can be reached at rtouchberry@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.