On January 20, 2025, America witnessed another significant event: President Donald Trump’s inauguration in Washington, D.C. The ceremony marked the beginning of his four-year term, echoing his well-known slogan “Make America Great Again.”
In a bold move, Trump announced the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. This decision initiated a major shift in the nation’s energy and climate policies. His “America First” energy strategy focuses on boosting fossil fuel production, rolling back regulations, and reducing government oversight. Supporters see this as a way to enhance energy independence and foster economic growth. However, critics warn it could lead to severe environmental damage and a loss of global leadership.
Exiting the Paris Agreement: A Signal to the World
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday to withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement. It signaled a huge setback for global efforts to combat climate change. This decision mirrors his 2017 move to pull the U.S. out of the same accord.
The Paris Agreement, formed in 2015, seeks to limit global temperature rise to 2.7°F (1.5°C) above pre-industrial levels. The fallback goal is to stay below 3.6°F (2°C). Countries set their emission reduction targets, which are expected to become more ambitious over time.
As reported by AP News, along with an executive order, Trump signed a letter to the United Nations, officially stating his intent to exit the agreement. The accord requires nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas. In contrast, the Biden administration proposed reducing U.S. emissions by over 60% by 2035 as part of its climate strategy.
Trump’s decision further isolates the U.S. from key global allies. It raises concerns about the international community’s ability to tackle climate change without American leadership.
Biennial Transparency Report: Net Greenhouse Gas Emissions
According to the U.S. government’s most recent official projections, the full 2024 Policy Baseline sees the U.S. achieving net GHG emission reductions of:
Relative to 2005 levels
- 29 – 46% in 2030,
- 36 – 57% in 2035
- 34 – 64% in 2040
Trump Declares National Energy Emergency: Drilling and Deregulation
One of Trump’s most controversial moves was declaring an “energy emergency”. Trump said,
“The inflation crisis is caused by overspending and massive and escalating energy prices that is why I also declare a national energy emergency. America will be a manufacturing nation again and we will have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have, the largest amount of oil and gas that any country on earth has and we are going to use it,”.
The White House stated that the U.S. lacks enough energy supply and infrastructure to meet its needs. It stressed the importance of reliable, affordable energy for industries, defense, and everyday life. High energy prices, worsened by past policies, hurt low- and fixed-income families the most.
The statement warned that foreign adversaries exploit U.S. energy weaknesses, targeting infrastructure and manipulating global markets. Energy security is crucial for protecting Americans and stabilizing the economy. A strong domestic energy supply reduces reliance on foreign sources and ensures national security.
Notably, the Trump administration has promised to reduce energy prices as a measure to combat high inflation.
Unleashing Alaska’s Resource Potential
Alaska holds a special place in Trump’s energy strategy and broadly in American energy dominance. In Alaska, Trump issued an executive order to lift restrictions on oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Beyond opening the ANWR to drilling, Trump’s policies focus on expanding resource extraction across the state, including mining and natural gas projects.
The administration argues that Alaska’s resources are vital for national security and economic growth. He also plans to fast-track permits for energy projects, claiming that lengthy bureaucratic processes hinder economic growth.
However, these actions face significant opposition. Environmental activists warn that increased drilling could accelerate climate change, particularly as the Arctic warms at twice the global average. Indigenous groups, too, are voicing concerns about the impact on their cultural heritage and traditional practices.
- MUST READ: Trump’s Tactic to Make America Great Again: Expanding Domestic Oil, Gas, and Critical Minerals
Targeting Renewable Energy, Embracing Fossil Fuels Again
This stance could stall progress in the rapidly growing renewable energy sector. Over the past decade, wind and solar power have become more competitive, creating thousands of jobs. Industry leaders worry that removing federal support will slow innovation and weaken the United States’ position in the global clean energy race.
Meanwhile, states like California and New York have pledged to continue their investments in renewables. California, for example, has vowed to continue its aggressive climate policies, including a ban on gas-powered car sales by 2035.
Rolling Back EV Push and Emissions Rules
Electric vehicles (EVs) have been at the forefront of climate solutions. However, Trump plans to repeal federal tax credits for EVs and reverse energy efficiency mandates. These rollbacks aim to reduce government intervention in the auto industry and encourage consumer choice.
Reuters recently reported that the Biden administration’s goal of having 50% of new vehicles sold in the U.S. be electric by 2030 was non-binding but had gained support from automakers across the globe.
Trump’s executive order halts the $5 billion fund for EV charging stations and proposes ending state waivers, including California’s 2035 gasoline car ban. The order also directs the EPA to reconsider stricter emissions rules that require automakers to increase EV sales to 30-56% by 2032.
A Setback for Clean Transportation?
The motive is simple i.e. reducing EV sales requirements and challenging efforts to expand electric vehicle adoption. It also clearly indicates a shift away from Biden’s climate-focused policies, signaling a renewed push for fossil fuel reliance and less government intervention in the automotive industry. The debate over these policies will likely continue, with legal and market forces shaping the future of America’s vehicle market.
Critics argue that this approach favors gasoline-powered vehicles, delays the transition to cleaner transportation, and can potentially increase carbon emissions. Automakers, who have already invested heavily in EV production, face uncertainty about future regulations. Meanwhile, countries like China and Germany continue to dominate the EV market, leaving the U.S. at risk of falling behind.
Suzanna Massingue, a low-carbon transportation analyst at S&P Global explained that Trump has repeatedly criticized EVs, targeting the Biden-era EV tax credit and the shift toward electrification. Removing this tax credit would hurt the U.S. EV industry and delay cost parity with gas-powered cars.
The Paradox of America’s Progress Under Trump’s Rule
President Trump’s “America First” energy strategy represents a paradox in U.S. climate policy. On one side, it focuses on boosting economic growth, energy independence, and creating jobs through fossil fuel expansion. On the other side, critics warn that this approach could harm the environment and hurt the country’s global leadership in tackling climate change.
The Anti-Trump group believes that by prioritizing deregulation and fossil fuels, the administration is aiming for short-term economic benefits. Moreover, legal challenges already exist, with environmental groups preparing to fight in court. They argue that many of Trump’s policies violate laws that protect the environment and public health.
In conclusion, America’s energy future seems uncertain at this moment. Legal battles, market shifts, and state policies will all play an important role in determining America’s carbon footprint. Most significantly, Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement has sparked significant criticism. But how much America will truly benefit from this approach– only time will tell!
The post Trump’s “America First” Energy Agenda: The Critical Points You Must Know appeared first on Carbon Credits.
Most businesses that decide to act on their net-zero targets reach the same point of friction. Buying carbon credits has meant tracking down brokers, sitting through sales calls, and requesting a quote just to learn a price, sometimes with limited proof of what you are buying.
The earnings calls that quietly reframed climate from sustainability question to operating risk.
Three earnings calls in the last 18 months tell the story without any help from a press release.
Hershey, May 2024: cocoa price exposure compresses margin, and the company attributes part of the cost shock to West African weather. Olam, July 2024: coffee climate exposure quantified in the annual report. JBS, January 2025: supply chain climate disclosures expanded materially in response to investor pressure and regulatory expectation. None of these companies issued the announcement as climate news. They issued it as financial news. The climate-linked supply chain risk did not arrive with a sustainability framing; it arrived as a P&L line.
You are probably reading this article because you suspect the same thing is happening to your business. This piece walks through what is showing up on which earnings calls, how procurement and finance leaders are quantifying the exposure, and what serious corporates are doing about it before the regulator asks.
Where climate risk has already appeared in earnings
The pattern is consistent across resource-intensive sectors. A weather event compresses supply, the price spikes, the cost flows through the income statement, and the analyst on the call asks whether the event is anomalous or structural. Increasingly, the honest answer is the second one.
Cocoa is the cleanest example. The 2023 to 2024 West African harvest fell sharply on the back of erratic rainfall and disease. Cocoa futures more than tripled. Companies with concentrated West African sourcing absorbed the cost; companies with diversified sourcing absorbed less. The exposure was not climate as ESG topic. It was climate as cost of goods.
Coffee follows the same pattern. Brazilian and Vietnamese harvests have moved on weather more sharply across the last several seasons. Roasters with long-tenor supplier relationships and origin diversification have managed the volatility; roasters with spot-market exposure have not. Wheat, sugar, palm oil, beef: the same dynamic in different commodities, a pattern the IPCC AR6 Working Group II report projects will intensify across agricultural systems through mid-century.
What this means: climate risk is no longer a footnote in the 10-K. It is a line item the CFO has to explain on the call.
The three commodity exposures that hit margin first
For most companies with material Scope 3 exposure, three exposures dominate the near-term P&L risk.
- Concentrated single-origin sourcing in a climate-vulnerable region. If your tier-one supply for any material commodity sits in one geography, you have a concentration risk that climate amplifies. Diversification across origins is the obvious hedge, but it takes years to build and requires relationships you cannot acquire by tender.
- Supplier financial fragility under climate stress. Smallholder farmers, who supply a large share of the global cocoa, coffee, and palm oil market, do not carry the balance sheets to absorb yield shocks. When yields collapse, they exit. When they exit, your supply base shrinks, and the surviving suppliers raise prices. The risk is structural, not cyclical.
- Logistics and storage exposure to extreme weather. Hurricane disruptions to Gulf shipping, drought-driven Panama Canal restrictions, flooding in European inland waterways: each of these has moved input costs in the last three years, a pattern documented in Munich Re’s natural catastrophe data. The exposure shows up as a one-quarter event in the financial press but accumulates over time on the cost line.
TCFD and ISSB disclosure changes
The disclosure architecture has now caught up with the risk. The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, whose recommendations are now embedded in the ISSB’s IFRS S2 climate standard, requires companies to disclose climate-related risks across physical and transition categories, with quantification where possible.
For physical risk specifically (the climate-linked supply chain risk you are reading about), the disclosure must address both acute exposures (extreme weather events) and chronic exposures (gradual changes in temperature, precipitation, and growing seasons). The disclosure must address the time horizon over which the risk is material, the parts of the value chain exposed, and the financial impact under different scenarios.
The CSRD imposes similar requirements under European law, with double materiality (both financial and impact materiality) embedded in the assessment. The practical effect: your auditors and your investor relations team now need a defensible answer to the climate-linked supply chain risk question, and the answer needs to be quantified.
What procurement and finance can do now
Three actions matter near-term.
Map your exposure. Most companies do not have a clear view of which tier-one and tier-two suppliers sit in which climate-vulnerable geographies. Without the map, you cannot quantify the risk, and without the quantification, you cannot disclose it credibly. The map is the foundation, and World Resources Institute climate risk research provides useful public tooling to start.
Diversify and deepen, in that order. Diversification across origins reduces concentration risk, but the deeper move is to invest in the resilience of the suppliers you already have. Regenerative practices, agroforestry, soil health interventions: these reduce yield volatility under climate stress and protect your input cost trajectory.
Embed the climate spend inside procurement, not outside it. Treating climate risk as a sustainability cost line subordinates it to the ESG budget. Treating it as a procurement and resilience investment puts it in the budget that matters, which is the cost-of-goods budget that the CFO defends quarterly.
Nature-based supply chain investments are the asset class designed for exactly this purpose. They sit inside the value chain, they reduce climate-linked supply risk, they generate verifiable Scope 3 reductions, and they produce the documentation an auditor and a regulator can both test.
If you are quantifying climate-linked supply chain risk in advance of the next earnings cycle or the next disclosure period, the carbon and sustainability experts at Carbon Credit Capital can help you map your exposure and structure a Dual-Value Model response that addresses reduction, resilience, and disclosure-readiness in a single program. Schedule a consultation.
More and more small and medium-sized businesses are hearing the same question from their larger customers: What is your carbon footprint? That question now travels down entire supply chains, and it arrives next to tender requirements, certification criteria, and rising customer expectations.
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