EU rejects Trump’s threats to cut green subsidies – POLITICO

But that won’t have much impact on the EU, experts and industry figures say. For starters, they simply don’t believe Trump will actually repeal the signature bill if he’s elected — practically speaking, it will create additional manufacturing jobs in red states.

Even if Trump excludes the EU from the IRA’s green goodies, Europe will not benefit anyway. And a full repeal could even help European governments struggling to match U.S. subsidy spending. Essentially, the global cleantech race will continue regardless.

“I just don’t think there’s any chance of it being fully repealed,” said Antoine Vagneur-Jones, a senior analyst at BloombergNEF who specializes in the climate-friendly industries called cleantech. “It will be very difficult for (Trump) to flip a switch and suddenly make it impossible for European companies to access those different incentives.”

Of course, the IRA is a small part of Trump’s promised economic turmoil that could do more damage abroad. The tariff enthusiast has toyed with a tax on every product entering the United States. Would that encourage China to flood Europe with more cheap products – a practice that is already hurting EU solar producers? Would Europe’s emerging green tech companies suddenly lose a huge market?

Still, green companies insist they are optimistic.

“Economically speaking, it would not be a good idea to abolish the IRA, because it creates a lot of jobs,” said Walburga Hemetsberger, CEO of the Brussels SolarPower Europe lobby. Be that as it may, “it is a concern that is not our concern.”