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Your guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the world
At least the Soviet Union only produced one “Sputnik moment”, when the launch of its orbiting satellite in 1957 administered a galvanising shock to the US scientific and defence establishment. America’s current superpower rival, China, is claiming them on a regular basis, the launch of the DeepSeek AI large language models being one among several. But for an array of green technologies, notably batteries and electric vehicles, the US seems content to shrug and let China win.
The green spending in Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which expanded federal spending and tax credits for technologies including hydrogen, solar and wind power and clean fuel production had two goals. One was to get Biden re-elected by creating jobs, the second to challenge Chinese supremacy and establish US…
