Do you hear the laughter from the East? It's the sound of 1.4 billion Chinese people laughing at us.

Chinese people can hardly believe their luck: as the dawn of the era of artificial intelligence, which consumes a lot of electricity, is just beginning, the President of the United States and his party have decided to carry out the biggest strategic self-harm action that challenges people's imagination. They passed a massive bill, which, among other crazy plans, intentionally undermines America's ability to generate power from renewable energy - especially solar, batteries, and wind energy.

Impact on Green Energy Investment

Why? Because they consider these energies as "liberal" energies, although today they are the fastest and cheapest way to upgrade the grid to meet the explosive demand for artificial intelligence data centers.

This is exactly the opposite of China's approach.

China, even Saudi Arabia, are doubling down on investing in solar energy to meet the needs of artificial intelligence data centers, while Trump's "Big and Beautiful Act" does the opposite. It will quickly phase out the tax credits enjoyed by utility-scale solar and wind energy industries - as well as electric vehicles. This actually ensures that China has the future of solar energy, wind energy, electric vehicles and trucks, as well as autonomous cars.

Fortunately, Trump and his friends have indeed kept a major tax credit policy from the Biden era until 2036, which applies to companies developing other zero-emission technologies - such as nuclear reactors, hydroelectric plants, geothermal power plants, and battery storage systems. The problem is that it may take up to ten years to build a nuclear power plant in the United States, and, as reported by The New York Times, the bill adds "complex restrictions" to the tax credits for battery storage systems, "prohibiting related companies from having ties with 'forbidden foreign entities' like China." Therefore, "some worry that these restrictions are too complex, ultimately leading many projects to be unable to benefit from the credits."

In summary, this bill, hastily passed without even one hearing with independent energy experts or a single scientist present, will definitely threaten billions of dollars of renewable energy investments. By the way, the bill also prohibits charging for methane emissions exceeding standards in oil and gas production in the next decade, and methane emissions are a key factor in global warming.

Severely Damaging Emerging Industries

Therefore, this bill will make your home hotter, increase air conditioning costs, reduce job opportunities in clean energy sectors, weaken the American automotive industry, and make China happier.

In the United States, the person who understands this most is Elon Musk. Many people will not understand a crucial fact that Musk has been loudly urging his American compatriots: Trump's bill is "completely crazy and destructive. It provides aid to dying industries, but seriously harms future industries."

This is not complicated, and China is very clear: the connection between a country's ability to produce large amounts of electricity at an affordable cost (and in the cleanest way) and its ability to develop artificial intelligence engines has never been closer. Artificial intelligence engines consume a lot of electricity in the process of learning and generating answers, thus providing us with the tools we need to treat diseases, discover new materials, and even produce cheap, clean, climate-saving fusion energy.

In other words, a country's ability to produce low-cost, clean electricity for artificial intelligence models is more closely linked to its future economic and military strength than ever before.

This is why Musk and many others consider it so "crazy and destructive," because Trump and his Republican followers refuse to accept the energy policy of "implementing as clean as possible as quickly as possible" - committed to phasing out the dirtiest and replacing them with the cleanest, as China often does. Instead, Trump chooses to attack America's renewable energy industry. He even called the clean energy tax credits a "scam," saying he would rather spend the money elsewhere. This is industrial-scale stupidity.

China's Increasing "Electrification"

Few Americans realize that China has already led us by a lot in this area, and is moving further and faster every day.

China's initial power growth was mainly driven by the expansion of coal-fired power generation, but in recent years, the expansion of hydropower, solar, wind, and battery storage has driven power growth. These energy facilities are easier, cheaper, and faster to build, and help address climate change.

As a recent report from Shanghai published by the Financial Times stated: "China is becoming the first 'electrified country' in the world, with electricity accounting for an increasing share of China's energy, and clean technology is increasingly driving China's economy. It provides a strategic buffer for China in trade decoupling and the growing geopolitical tensions with the United States."

Trump's goal is to make the United States dominate the global energy sector during his term, but his bill will only make this goal impossible. Without renewable energy, the United States cannot achieve energy dominance within the next five years.

What will be the result for Americans? According to the U.S. energy innovation policy and technology company, Trump's efforts to weaken the U.S. renewable energy industry will lead to a 50% increase in wholesale electricity prices by 2035, and by 2030, consumers will see an additional $16 billion in annual energy costs. The company also predicts that by 2030, the renewable energy industry will lose 830,000 jobs, or they will not be created at all.

Nothing is more destined to make China great again than Trump's "Big and Beautiful, America will hand the future of electricity to Beijing" bill. (Translated by Guo Jun)

This article was published on the website of The New York Times on July 3, titled "How Trump's 'Big and Beautiful Act' Makes China Great Again," written by Thomas Friedman.

Original: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7524509683885916708/

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