The Democrat-only IRA included a suite of tax credits for climate-friendly energy sources and electric vehicles as part of an effort to combat climate change. It also included money for grants that subsidize climate-friendly or pollution-cutting projects and a program to punish oil and gas companies for leaks of planet-warming methane.
Since its passage, the law has been in the crosshairs of Republicans. If they win the White House and both chambers of Congress, they’re likely to aim for at least a partial repeal.
If they win the presidency but don’t get both houses of Congress — or need time to work out the specifics of a repeal — a second Trump administration could also go to executive action to curtail the law’s reach.
“We need a strategy for day one, thinking about how we can put the American taxpayer first,” said Oliver McPherson-Smith, director of the Center for Energy & Environment at the America First Policy Institute, a right-wing nonprofit that includes several Trump administration alumni.
“I think an America first administration should scour every single IRA program and question ‘how can we save the American taxpayer dollars?’ in each and every one of them and ‘how can we prevent the flow of money to the [Chinese Communist Party]?'”
One key tool for doing so could be the tax credit guidance issued by the Treasury Department.
In several cases, the Biden administration has taken a broad interpretation, maximizing the number of entities eligible for the credits — especially when it comes to tax credits for electric vehicles.
Asked about what a future Trump administration would do about the IRA, Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an email that Trump “will repeal Joe Biden’s radical EV mandates and cut costs to reduce inflation and get our economy booming again.”
Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of the Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment at the conservative Heritage Foundation, noted that these subsidies “could be scaled back with new Treasury interpretation without changing the law.”
Read more when the story comes out tomorrow at TheHill.com.
