It seems America and the rest of the world may look very different in the 2030s.
The rest of the world living in the future with EVs and cheap renewable energy. America in some strange steampunk version of the future, where energy is expensive, everyone still drives huge gasoline cars, and power stations still belch smoke from coal.
Cheap Chinese EVs that cost <$20k and run on cheap renewable electricity, frequently from home solar, will likely be rapidly becoming the global norm in the 2030s. I wonder if the fossil fuel industry has home solar in its sights, too? They have all the American politicians in their pockets that they need to ban it in the US.
Trump says U.S. will not approve solar or wind power projects
Trump administration halts work on an almost-finished wind farm
My guess on the third-string command is that everything has been too fast-moving for large scale organization and the administration has been very aggressive with purging “the deep state” and repeated demonstrations that blind loyalty is the primary qualification for all new political appointments. That also works on the red half of Congress, with primary election challenger threats (and kompromat in my view) being enough to keep them in line in an environment of unhinged voter frenzy. Canceling the Education department is a hope to keep the populace credulous in the future. Critical thinking by the masses is anathema.
I think there are three main drivers behind the anti-renewable strategy. One is quid pro quo political corruption (now legal thanks to Citizens’ United), with a billion oil dollars for campaign and legal defense. People with concentrated capital have power and want to preserve it. Another is an inevitably-unsuccessful attempt to preserve the dominance of the petrodollar as the world reserve currency. I’ve recently come to understand that was the fundamental driver for GWB invading Iraq, which is to say that Hussein had just started selling oil in Euros, breaking a promise that the US had previously extracted from OPEC to only sell in dollars (thereby driving worldwide dollar-demand).
The third is that it spins well with the stereotypical MAGA base who like to detune their diesel truck engines to spew soot solely to anger Prius drivers. They also seem to believe that it’s possible and desirable to return to a huge scale of coal mining jobs, along with other oil and gas extraction. Roughneck work doesn’t require a woke college education and it’s a peak macho job ideal.
As for billionaires and their heirs, it’s better for them to try to preserve the petrodollar and end up ruling over a smoking ruin from their bunkers than to let the petrodollar reserve currency disintegrate and the explosion of national debt service death spiral the US economy. They don’t need to be in Russia or China’s pocket to have their interests sufficiently aligned with this administration’s goals.
The tariffs are supposedly introduced to remove the US dependency on the petro dollar. Supposedly Trump and his supporters want production to be in the USA because they fear that they lose the skills to make the best weapons. For that the dollar mustn't be overvalued so that production doesn't move overseas.
The billionaires are going to lose almost everything if China takes over. There is no way that they are happy with ruling over ruins.