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Is the Republican Party a Chinese Communist Conspiracy?
The Senate version of the Big Beautiful Bill passed on Tuesday. It now heads to the House, where odds are strong it will get through by the end of the week. As we at the Prospect have been covering in detail, Trump’s mega-bill would deal a devastating blow against the green industries that will obviously drive the global economy for the rest of this century.
Fortunately, a couple of truly mind-bendingly awful provisions were taken out. While accelerated depreciation, a business tax break that solar and wind have had access to since 1986, ends in this bill, a tax on solar and wind production was removed, while tax credits for those technologies will now expire within 12 months of enactment rather than in September. (These aren’t just Biden-era subsidies, by the way, some of them have been around since the 1970s.) Essentially, solar and wind projects would have to be under construction in the next 12 months to qualify for tax credits, and those projects would also have to be in service by the end of 2027.
That’s going to be a difficult task. You might expect a sizable boom in the next 12 months, as companies race to get in under the wire before the tax credits expire. But with everyone competing to do so, a run on manpower and components will surely follow. Prices will likely go up, nullifying some of the benefit of the tax credits. In the end, fewer projects than expected are likely to get completed in the next year, and after that the well will go very dry.
Plus, other provisions remain. There are huge new subsidies for coal, for example. Coal leases on federal lands will be expanded by a minimum of four million acres, while the royalty rate would be cut from 12.5 percent to 8 percent. Metallurgical coal (used for steel production) will now be included as a “critical mineral” eligible for tax credits through 2030. Unbelievably, this coal doesn’t even have to be used domestically to get the subsidy. This makes sense for coal producers, who already export the vast majority of this kind of coal, but it means Republicans are literally subsidizing dirty, cheap steel production in India and China.
Fortunately, a couple of truly mind-bendingly awful provisions were taken out. While accelerated depreciation, a business tax break that solar and wind have had access to since 1986, ends in this bill, a tax on solar and wind production was removed, while tax credits for those technologies will now expire within 12 months of enactment rather than in September. (These aren’t just Biden-era subsidies, by the way, some of them have been around since the 1970s.) Essentially, solar and wind projects would have to be under construction in the next 12 months to qualify for tax credits, and those projects would also have to be in service by the end of 2027.
That’s going to be a difficult task. You might expect a sizable boom in the next 12 months, as companies race to get in under the wire before the tax credits expire. But with everyone competing to do so, a run on manpower and components will surely follow. Prices will likely go up, nullifying some of the benefit of the tax credits. In the end, fewer projects than expected are likely to get completed in the next year, and after that the well will go very dry.
Plus, other provisions remain. There are huge new subsidies for coal, for example. Coal leases on federal lands will be expanded by a minimum of four million acres, while the royalty rate would be cut from 12.5 percent to 8 percent. Metallurgical coal (used for steel production) will now be included as a “critical mineral” eligible for tax credits through 2030. Unbelievably, this coal doesn’t even have to be used domestically to get the subsidy. This makes sense for coal producers, who already export the vast majority of this kind of coal, but it means Republicans are literally subsidizing dirty, cheap steel production in India and China.
https://prospect.org/environment/2025-07-02-big-beautiful-bill-green-energy-climate-china/
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