Trump’s Fossil Fuel Agenda Hands the Future of Energy—and U.S. Competitiveness—to Beijing
China’s nuclear breakthroughs could cement its dominance while the United States clings to fossil fuels.
On the same day President Donald Trump pledged to “drill, baby, drill” in his inaugural address, China’s EAST fusion reactor achieved an unprecedented breakthrough, maintaining a stable state for over 1,000 seconds and strengthening China’s position in the race for limitless energy. China leads the world in solar, wind, and commercial nuclear energy. If Washington throws its lot in with fossil fuels and neglects the energy technologies of the future, any short-term economic gain will be of little consequence. The United States will lose out on global influence and risk irreversibly falling behind China economically and technologically in the twenty-first century in the way that the coal-powered United Kingdom fell behind the oil-driven United States in the twentieth.
Trump has already signed orders to repeal Biden’s bar on offshore drilling, suspend new leasing for offshore wind, freeze funds for EV infrastructure and scrap EV targets, and withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement for a second time. His focus is on exploiting the U.S.’s huge fossil fuel reserves and reinvigorating the country’s automotive sector, which is at risk from competition from Chinese EVs.
This may prove successful in the short- to medium term in providing cheap energy and fueling the U.S. economy, but in the long run, it presents a serious risk to U.S. competitiveness unless it is combined with massive investment in nuclear, including research into the development of fusion power. While Trump’s pick for Energy Secretary, Chris Wright, has spoken in favor of nuclear power, it is unclear how willing Trump himself is to invest.
The long-term risk comes from China’s competitiveness across renewables, commercial nuclear energy, and nuclear fusion. China’s ongoing roll-out of major nuclear capacity provides a far more efficient and sustainable energy base than oil and natural gas. Meanwhile, with the United States withdrawing from the clean energy race, China’s current competitive edge in wind, solar, and EVs could rapidly become an insurmountable gulf, making China the only conceivable partner for developing countries and U.S. allies committed to the green transition. In the Global South, many countries are seeking to transition directly to efficient renewable energy systems; Washington is now poised to exclude itself from these markets.
Without serious competition, Beijing will extend its current dominance of the renewable and EV sectors, and thanks to its influence, be able to set technical standards and dictate global climate governance. The European Union is already seeking technology transfers from Chinese EV companies, underscoring China’s growing lead.
Then, consider that for these supply chains, Chinese companies occupy a major role in raw material extraction, monopolize mineral processing, have the lion’s share of component manufacturing and assembly, and dominate global shipping. The energy security of most of the world could become dependent on Beijing, locking in China’s influence for decades.
Beijing has been able to do this because it saw an emerging niche it could exploit and planned systematically to occupy it at all stages of the supply chain. It now leads in technology. Washington needs to be thinking in similar terms, not falling back on easy short-term solutions that will cede long-term leadership to China. If not renewables—where catching up with China is now unfeasible—then nuclear fission development and the pursuit of nuclear fusion capability are vital, and serious strategic planning and investment need to happen now.
At present, while China drives home its advantage in renewables, it is also poised to establish a lead in nuclear fusion. Fusion is one of the few emerging technologies that could single-handedly transform the global order and economy. The capacity to generate effectively limitless energy would grant an enormous first-mover advantage. China’s recent breakthrough more than doubles the previous record for sustaining the stability required—which was also set by China’s EAST reactor. Meanwhile, the United States is increasingly reliant on cooperation with Japan and European allies—none of which have the resources or capacity to compete with China in the long term.
But even without fusion, if the United States neglects renewables and nuclear energy in favor of oil and gas, China will be set not only to secure long-term dominance of global energy technology but also to efficiently and sustainably power emerging technologies from AI to quantum computing, further entrenching Beijing’s technological lead. This is even more the case when combined with China’s control over critical supply chains and dominance of global manufacturing capacity, with an annual output double that of the United States.This challenge should worry the Trump administration more than any other threat Beijing poses. The Chinese Communist Party’s explicit intent is that this combination of factors will allow China to surge ahead of the United States just as the UK eclipsed the rest of the world in the nineteenth century and the United States did in the twentieth. Unless steps are taken now, current Chinese competitiveness and American short-termism could very quickly transform into permanent Chinese leadership and American decline. America second, China first.
Dr. William Matthews is a Senior Research Fellow for China and the World in the Asia-Pacific Program at Chatham House. He is an expert in China’s foreign relations, specializing in the geopolitical implications of China as a rising power, including technological competition, China–U.S. relations, and Indo-Pacific security. He previously worked in the AI and geopolitical risk sectors, with a focus on U.S.-China technology competition and strategic vulnerabilities posed by China’s technological and economic influence. Before that, he taught the comparative social science of China at the London School of Economics.
Image: Reuters /Kevin Lamarque