"You could imagine the US and Europe bringing countries in Africa and Latin America into a new trade paradigm where they say, hey, we will help fund some of the clean transition in exchange for guarantees of critical minerals. That's what the IRA does. It says fundamentally, we are going to need some politics, some statecraft, as part of the climate transition. And we're not going to be able to just come up with a carbon price and expect the Global South to pay for it."
Rana Farooha
Financial Times
"The US, like Europe and others, have to buy a lot of critical materials that for the moment are mostly controlled by China. It's not possible just to consider only the national interest and not the necessity for developing countries to, in a way, develop their own industry, and not a new model we have to invent. If not, we will have a lot of tension and a lot of blockage and a lot of competition from China or others. And I don't think we necessarily will win this competition."
Laurence Tubiana
President and CEO European Climate Foundation
Our view
The Inflation Reduction Act is unabashedly a government intervention program for the US to level the playing field with China and enable the US to be the leader in energy transition. However, they can't do this alone. There need to be a more collaborative approach to solving the existential threat of climate change and that will require bringing partners on this path. China, Europe as well as developing countries will play a key role in this.
This is a 9-part Series. The next and final part will be on 'Second Trump term could change everything'.
For the full video from FT REPORT
Here's our other post of the Inflation Reduction Act.