Could Trump Cancel the IRA?

The Inflation Reduction Act is Biden’s signature climate initiative. Trump has already called for repealing it, and so have some Republicans in Congress.  Given the IRA’s huge cuts in carbon emissions, that would be a tragedy.  Can he do that?

He would certainly face some very significant barriers.  Trump would need Republican majorities in the Senate (very likely) and the House (less likely).  When Trump was in office before, the Republicans found it difficult to pass legislation, and today’s GOP House can barely manage to function.  Although they’ve expressed vociferous opposition to the IRA, it wouldn’t be at the top of their list of legislative priorities. And the IRA is supporting billions of dollars of investment in Red States. As Evan George and I have argued, this makes for a powerful incentive to keep the law in place.

Yet I’m still worried. Here’s why.  Ideology often seems to trump policy in today’s GOP.  Keep in mind that Republicans came within a single Senate vote of repealing Obamacare, even though many Republican governors opposed repeal because it would harm their states.  (The decisive voter was John McCain’s, who is no longer with us.)  In addition, an IRA repeal could be as an offset for the revenue loss from a big tax cut.  And both of the tax cut and the IRA repeal would qualify for the filibuster-proof “reconciliation “ procedure in the Senate.

The bottom line is that the odds are against Trump repealing the IRA.. But that’s far from being a sure thing.  And repeal of the IRA would be a disaster for climate policy.  Even though it seems like an unlikely outcome, it’s definitely not impossible.