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In It to Win It

(11,107 posts)
Fri Jul 4, 2025, 08:47 AM Jul 4

How Trump's 'Big, Beautiful Bill' Will Make China Great Again - Tom Friedman @ NYT

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Can you hear it — that loud roar coming from the East? It’s the sound of 1.4 billion Chinese laughing at us.

The Chinese simply can’t believe their luck: that at the dawn of the electricity-guzzling era of artificial intelligence, the U.S. president and his party have decided to engage in one of the greatest acts of strategic self-harm imaginable. They have passed a giant bill that, among other craziness, deliberately undermines America’s ability to generate electricity through renewables — solar, battery and wind power in particular.

And why? Because they view those as “liberal” energy sources, even though today they are the quickest and cheapest ways to boost our electricity grid to meet the explosion of demand from A.I. data centers.

It is exactly the opposite of what China is doing. Indeed, Beijing may have to make July 4 its own national holiday going forward: American Electricity Dependence Day.

You cannot make this up: Even Saudi Arabia is doubling down on solar power to meet the needs of the A.I. data centers it wants to recruit from the West, while Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” actually does just the opposite. It quickly phases out tax credits enjoyed by utility-scale solar and wind — as well as electric vehicle tax credits. This virtually guarantees that China will own the future of solar energy, wind power and electric cars and trucks, as well as autonomous vehicles.

Thankfully, Trump and friends did keep until 2036 a major Biden-era tax credit for companies that build other emissions-free technologies like nuclear reactors, hydroelectric dams, geothermal plants and battery storage. The problem is that it can take up to 10 years to build a nuclear plant in America, and, as The Times reported, the bill added “complex restrictions” to the battery credits “that bar recipients from having ties to ‘prohibited foreign entities’ like China.’’ As a result, “some worry that the restrictions are so complicated that the credits could end up being unusable for many projects.”
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How Trump's 'Big, Beautiful Bill' Will Make China Great Again - Tom Friedman @ NYT (Original Post) In It to Win It Jul 4 OP
While Trump is the apparent target, this article is really crudely xenophobic. David__77 Jul 4 #1

David__77

(24,310 posts)
1. While Trump is the apparent target, this article is really crudely xenophobic.
Fri Jul 4, 2025, 11:06 AM
Jul 4

More zero-sum game thinking, just like Trump. Conjuring the image of “1.4 billion laughing Chinese.” It seems to me that China is largely focused on developing, while it’s this country’s elites that have the crisis of confidence, fearful of losing what it hopes to be a permanent global dominance.

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