A political historian is warning that President-elect Donald Trump’s energy policies could come back to hurt the red states that propelled him into the White House.
Leigh Wright Rigueur, an associate professor of history at Johns Hopkins University, said the incoming president’s goal to cut energy costs by pushing for an expansion of fossil fuels – “drill, baby, drill” – and rolling back green initiatives could end up harming his supporters because energy prices are usually outside a chief executive’s control.
She told CNN that the price of natural gas is likely to surge despite record-high production in the U.S. – a development that could make it difficult to get his energy initiatives through Congress and could lead to disastrous economic outcomes.
“I think, you know, the secretary of the interior, I think the secretary of energy both understand that or the newly appointed, the nominated secretaries understand that,” Rigueur said on CNN.
She also said that President Joe Biden’s energy policies in 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act have been “deeply beneficial” to both red in preserving manufacturing and sparking energy production.
“So there is a push amongst Republicans, particularly Republican congressmen, to keep those acts and to keep those things in place,” Rigueur said.
She said she “wouldn’t be surprised” if Trump’s administration takes credit for the benefits from Biden’s policies, a message Democrats failed to capitalize on.
“So I wouldn’t actually be surprised to see that, because there’s very little that Donald Trump can actually do to increase that won’t actually offset or create a depression or create a recession, will cause the loss of jobs and will hurt, actually, those red states that he claims that he wants to protect,” she said.
“I actually think that this is far more of a [public relations] campaign on the part of Donald Trump and really taking advantage of the work that the Biden administration has been putting in place,” Rigueur said.
