Trump’s Second Term: Major Victory For Capitalism And Science?
Trump's regulatory plans have environmental activists very upset
Following a decisive victory in the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump has begun to preview his policy priorities and staff his cabinet for the next four years. From his pledge to abolish the Department of Education and dismantle federal censorship efforts, Trump’s choices so far have largely pleased his broad coalition of supporters and predictably enraged his equally diverse cast of critics.
The Firebreak has little interest in partisan politics, as demonstrated by our refusal to endorse either presidential contender. But as advocates of free markets and perennial opponents of the environmental industrial-complex, we are keenly interested in the Trump Administration’s willingness to roll back sclerotic regulations that encourage poverty and undermine scientific progress.
For that reason we see some value in trying to anticipate how the incoming administration will regulate chemical safety, energy production and public health, and assess the potential impacts of those policies.
What can we expect on these critical issues? With Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy heading up the newly established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), we expect to see massive, necessary cuts in federal environmental regulation—with several potentially serious downsides related to public health policy. Let’s take a look at what we know so far.
Fossil fuel resurgence
The incoming administration’s energy policy is the easiest issue to comment on with confidence. As NPR reported just after the election, “Trump’s goal in a second term will be to boost fossil-fuel production.” The outlet also lamented that the president-elect has “railed against wind turbines and electric vehicles and “threatened to claw back unspent climate funding.”
Since Trump has appointed two officials from his previous administration, both with experience in the oil and coal industries, to oversee his energy policy transition, these promises to boost US oil production and cut support for “green” energy seem to be near certainties. The New York Times agrees, reporting on Nov. 8 that
“People working on the [Trump] transition have already prepared a slate of executive orders and presidential proclamations on climate and energy. They include withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate agreement … and shrinking the size of national monuments in the West to allow more drilling and mining on public lands.”
Every news item we reviewed for this article framed Trump’s pro-energy stance as a negative development, a shift that “could undo many of the national climate policies that are most reducing planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions,” to use the AP’s phrasing. We’re not as pessimistic as the press.
There’s no doubt that climate change is real and humans contribute to it, but neither of those facts minimizes the truth that scientists have wildly exaggerated the CO2 emissions generated by burning fossil fuels. As a result, the worst-case climate scenario grows “increasingly implausible with every passing year,” climatologists Zeke Hausfather and Glen Peters argued in 2020. The weather has never been less of a threat to human health and welfare than it is now.
And while the media laments the end of America’s allegedly climate-friendly policies, what benefits did those measures yield? The Biden Administration wasted $7.5 billion dollars trying (and failing) to build charging stations for federally subsidized electric vehicles (EVs) that most Americans still can’t afford. At one point, the EPA was so desperate for good news about EVs that it was paying people to submit positive anecdotes about their “electric rides.” But none of those stories could minimize the environmental impacts, safety issues or reliability concerns stemming from EV production and ownership.
Worse still, the US electric grid is nowhere near able to support a mass transition to EVs, and the hype around a solar- and wind-powered grid is just that. Anybody who claims the US is moving away from fossil fuels is terribly confused about where our energy comes from: natural gas, coal, nuclear and then heavily subsidized “renewables,” in that order.
That’s a long way of saying, Trump’s energy policies are refreshingly realistic. Affordable fossil fuels make our way of life possible, and it’s OK to say so.
Chemical regulation rollback
Trump’s approach to chemical regulation in his second term will be harder to anticipate for reasons we’ll consider shortly. Still, there is reason for cautious optimism. During his first stint in the White House Trump rolled back more than 100 environmental regulations governing everything from pesticide use to plastic water bottle sales. That trend will likely continue.
According to one law firm with extensive experience in environmental litigation, “Donald Trump’s return to the Presidency will likely lead to a substantial shift in the EPA’s role and effectiveness, marked by decentralized regulatory power at the federal level …”
This analysis rings true to us in part because the environmental movement deeply dislikes Trump’s nominee for EPA administrator: former Republican representative from Long Island, New York, Lee Zeldin. The left-leaning news outlet Grist warned that Zeldin will oversee “Regulatory rollbacks … justified as boosts for the economy, and platitudes about the importance of clean air and water.” Meanwhile the League of Conservation voters gives Zelden a lifetime pro-environment score of just 14 percent, owing to his opposition to almost every piece of environmental legislation.
UN Plastics treaty in doubt
The plastics industry and its billionaire-funded critics at various activist groups also seem to agree about the incoming Trump Administration. The industry in recent years has promoted innovations in recycling as the primary means of reducing pollution and promoting sustainability, with good reason as we argue here. Their cause will likely benefit from Trump’s regulatory rollbacks at EPA.
In contrast, the NGOs liken shrink wrap to tobacco and have lobbied for a United Nations treaty to cap global plastic production—a proposal that is probably destined to fail with a nationalist Republican headed back to the White House.
The bad news? Make America “Healthy” Again (MAHA)
Now for some (potentially) bad news: the Trump Administration could unleash Robert F. Kennedy Jr (RFK Jr) on public health policy. A prominent vaccine skeptic who believes that Cheerios poison children and pesticides turn people gay, Kennedy is spearheading the so-called MAHA movement alongside a cohort of wellness influencers and alternative health gurus. The movement gained major traction after RFK Jr gave up his bid for president and endorsed Trump in the final months of the campaign.
Endorsements don’t mean much on their own, but Trump seems poised to give Kennedy at least some authority over US health and science policy. During his recent appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience, he discussed his plans to allow RFK Jr to reform US food and farming policy, which could mean implementing new restrictions on pesticides and promoting organic agriculture practices with a proven record of starving people in the developing world. Organic celebrity farmer Joel Salatin has apparently been tapped for an advisory role at Trump’s USDA, if that is any indication of what’s to come.
An equally troubling possibility is that letting Kennedy influence health policy, as Trump recently vowed to do, could result in the federal government discouraging parents from vaccinating their children against preventable diseases. That would be a disaster. And as a lifelong Democrat and career plaintiffs attorney, it wouldn’t be out of character for RFK Jr to push for expanded federal control of the food and pharma industries or facilitate litigation against them.
This outcome isn’t set in stone, however. It was Trump’s first administration that facilitated the development and rollout of COVID-19 vaccines in record-breaking time, an accomplishment the science community describes as “a freaking miracle.” Whatever anti-vaccine sentiments Trump holds, they don’t seem strong enough to affect his public health policy priorities.
We aren’t the only ones to make that observation. In September, the Atlantic speculated that the Trump-Kennedy alliance was “tactical and temporary,” a way for Trump to expand his support among Kennedy’s anti-establishment followers. Citing his affinity both for big business and Big Macs–prior to his recent photo op at McDonald’s–the Atlantic concluded that “Trump seems sure to disappoint the woo-woo caucus” in a second term.
Indeed, just days ago Yahoo News reported that the Trump team has begun to quietly distance itself from RFK Jr following comments Kennedy made about possibly outlawing certain vaccines in the coming years:
“Donald Trump’s team appeared to be quietly distancing itself from Robert F Kennedy Jr in the immediate aftermath of the election amid speculation that the former presidential candidate could be handed control of US public health agencies.
…
It raises questions about what role, if any, Mr Kennedy would be given in the Trump administration, as the Republican’s transition team sets about filling thousands of federal posts for his return to the White House.”
This all remains to be seen, of course. Predicting the future is a fraught enterprise—a painful lesson the talking heads on cable news were once again forced to learn on election night. What we will say is that we hope Trump throws Kennedy under the bus.
If Trump sticks to his instincts and extends the same pro-market policies he implemented during his first term, the next four years will be a major roadblock for the foundations, NGOs, bureaucrats and lawyers working to undermine global capitalism. Our fingers are crossed.