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Trump’s executive orders focus on energy, AI, tax, trade and climate


The first evidence of the radical shift businesses can expect to US policy during Donald Trump’s second term in office has emerged via a raft of executive orders issued by the US president on the day of his inauguration.

Global climate and tax policy are among the issues addressed in the executive orders, along with the US approach to trade, AI regulation and energy generation.

Public policy expert Mark Ferguson of Pinsent Masons said the measures announced are relevant to the commercial strategies of businesses across sectors, based all around the world.

“We’re at the beginning of what will be a very different Trump administration from the first one,” Ferguson said. “President Trump is entering the White House on the back of a convincing electoral victory which has given him the firm support of the Republican Party and emboldened him from a policy perspective. His close circle is better prepared and better organised than his first term and will be more adept at pushing through his legislative agenda.”

“The swathe of executive orders signal the starting point in a range of policy areas, and the ending of a number of Biden administration executive orders indicates an awareness that they will need to move fast on key planks of the policy platform. There will be mid-term elections in 2026 where Republican control of Congress will come under threat and the Trump administration will want to achieve as much as possible before potentially losing its grip on the three branches of government,” he added.

On energy, Trump has pledged to “unleash American energy”, including by encouraging “energy exploration and production on Federal lands and waters”. The move is designed to promote US energy security, economic growth and lower energy prices – with Trump declaring a “national energy emergency” in one of his executive orders in which he confers emergency powers on US authorities to “facilitate the identification, leasing, siting, production, transportation, refining, and generation of domestic energy resources”. 

The Trump administration said it will further revoke a series of “burdensome and ideologically motivated regulations” that were designed to support the decarbonisation of the US energy sector, as well as other environment regulations, which it said threaten the US’ ability to deliver energy generation capacity and electricity grid resilience sufficient to “power the next generation of technology”.

The Trump administration also accused the last US government, led by former president Joe Biden, as overseeing “policies of climate extremism”. In one executive order, Trump has ordered the US’ immediate withdrawal from the Paris Agreement – the international accord agreed in late 2015 under which almost all countries around the world have pledged action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to stem global warming.

The Trump administration said: “In recent years, the United States has purported to join international agreements and initiatives that do not reflect our country’s values or our contributions to the pursuit of economic and environmental objectives. Moreover, these agreements steer American taxpayer dollars to countries that do not require, or merit, financial assistance in the interests of the American people.”

Ferguson said: “Energy was a central tenet of the Trump campaign, with his view that Americans were not benefiting from the country’s natural resources, and the withdrawal from the Paris Agreement echoes the steps the president took in his first term. Politics plays a large part in president Trump’s approach to the energy sector, but the energy transition will in all likelihood continue as the economics increasingly make the move to renewables viable and technology continues to develop.”

The US is also withdrawing from other international initiatives – from membership of the World Health Organization to the global tax deal put in place under the umbrella of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Dublin-based tax expert Robert Dever of Pinsent Masons said the US pulling out of the two-pillar solution know as BEPS 2.0 has brought the deal approved by 130 countries in the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework in 2021 into serious doubt.

“Having regard to the US global minimum tax rate introduced during president Trump’s first term, the 15% minimum effective tax rate that the EU, the UK and other participating countries have implemented as part of the deal may lead to top-up taxes being imposed on US companies”, Dever said. “The rhetoric in the presidential memorandum regarding the global tax deal and, in particular, the classification of measures introduced by other countries as retaliatory in nature together with an instruction to present a list of options for protective measures and other actions to be adopted, is worrying”.

Another potential outcome from the US withdrawal is the proliferation of digital services taxes by the US and other countries, in an effort to boost taxes to reflect a more digitalised economy, Dever added.

The Trump administration further confirmed the revocation of the 2023 executive order issued by Biden concerning safe, secure, and trustworthy development and use of AI.

London-based technology law expert Sarah Cameron of Pinsent Masons said: “The Biden executive order represented the US’ commitment to ensuring that there are some guardrails in place around AI use – a commitment it reaffirmed, together with China, the UK and EU, among other countries, in the so-called Bletchley declaration in November 2023, where the signatories, among other things, agreed that it is important to consider ‘a pro-innovation and proportionate governance and regulatory approach’ that achieves an appropriate balance between AI benefits and risks.”

“That declaration came amidst apparent consensus on the risks AI can pose without appropriate controls on its development and use – from risks to privacy and of discriminatory treatment, to the perpetuation of disinformation, fraud and other scams, and to labour market disruption, economic power imbalances, inequalities and even the possible loss of control over the technology, among other as-yet unknown risks that could attach to the next iterations of the technology,” she said.

“International collaboration around safety has been gathering momentum since the Bletchley summit, with the US having since established the Network of Safety Institutes which held their first convention in November to establish priorities for the forthcoming action summit in Paris. It is as yet unclear whether Trump plans to disband the US Institute. We must hope there is sufficient international momentum behind the initiative to continue to cooperate on AI safety in any event,” Cameron added.

On trade policy, one Trump executive order has pledged an “American first” approach.

Trump has ordered a review of “the causes of our country’s large and persistent annual trade deficits in goods, as well as the economic and national security implications and risks resulting from such deficits”, with “a global supplemental tariff” among potential remedies cited. Further reviews of the US’ existing trade agreements, including with China, as well as into whether other countries are engaging in “unfair trade practices”, have also been commissioned.

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