As part of his flurry of first-day actions, US President Donald Trump took aim at electric vehicles, a cornerstone of the Biden administration’s climate change agenda.Trump’s executive order on “Unleashing American Energy” on Monday included steps to ensure a “level” playing field for gasoline-powered motors and halt federal funding to build new EV charging stations.The executive order also appeared to presage other reversals, referencing the possible elimination of a federal tax credit for EV purchases and the renouncement of a US waiver that allows California to set stricter requirements on cars.During his inaugural address, Trump said the moves would “end” the “Green New Deal,” ridiculing Biden-backed incentives for EV sales.While Trump harshly criticized EVs during the presidential campaign, policy experts have been skeptical Trump will junk all the Biden-era EV programs, in part because significant federal funding has gone toward projects in Republican congressional districts, where thousands of jobs are expected to be created.Shares of EV makers like Rivian and EV charging companies such as EVgo fell sharply Tuesday. Tesla, which is led by close Trump ally Elon Musk, also fell.Kathy Harris, director for clean vehicles of the Natural Resources Defense Council, called Trump’s policy a sop for “fat-cat oil executives,” noting that EVs are better for the environment and can save consumers money on gasoline.Many of Trump’s executive orders are expected to face legal challenges, a possible outcome for the EV measures.”This is not the end of this story,” Harris said. “If the administration tries to cut corners or ignore the law, they will end up in court.”The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which has previously endorsed the need for stable auto rules, reiterated its criticism of California’s car regulations in a statement that did not address other elements in Trump’s executive order.”The country should have a single, national standard to reduce carbon in transportation,” said the group’s president, John Bozzella. “We can’t have regulations that push the industry too far ahead of the customer.”- 90-day review -The new policy comes as automakers pause some EV investments due to slowing growth, even as sales of emission-free vehicles climb to new levels in the United States.In 2024, EV sales in the country reached 1.3 million, up 7.3 percent from the prior year, according to Cox Automotive’s Kelley Blue Book, which pointed to a meaningful rise in EVs at different price levels.But GM, Ford and other automakers have scaled back some EV investments in recent months, pointing to slowing demand growth. A Ford executive warned in November that a glut of EVs across showrooms will lead to “incredible pressure” on prices in 2025.The broadside against EVs followed Trump’s targeting of the vehicles during the presidential campaign, when he claimed Democrat Kamala Harris wanted to force EVs on consumers.Harris said that she favored consumer choice. The Biden administration’s fuel economy rules required automakers to market fleets with sharply lower carbon dioxide emissions in a bid to address climate change, while laws such as the $400 billion Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 included a slew of lending and tax credit programs to boost EVs. Programs under the IRA and the 2021 infrastructure law are in various stages of implementation. Monday’s executive order directs officials implementing the IRA to undertake a 90-day review to ensure that spending does not unfairly favor EVs “by rendering other types of vehicles unaffordable.”Policy experts see no meaningful chance that the new administration will try to claw back US funds that have already been spent. But whether Trump will seek to block other projects that are still moving through the pipeline is less clear. Nearly half of the $5 billion set aside for new EV chargers has been allocated to states under the infrastructure law, according to a memo from NRDC. The 2021 infrastructure law’s “embedded safeguards… should ensure continuity for infrastructure investments,” the NRDC said. “Of course, the incoming administration could try drastic measures, but those will face real-world and legal hurdles.”In November, the Energy Department advanced projects to provide Rivian a $6.6 billion federal loan to build an EV manufacturing facility in Stanton Springs North, Georgia, and a $7.5 billion loan to StarPlus Energy to finance lithium-ion battery cell manufacturing plants in Kokomo, Indiana, under a Stellantis-Samsung joint venture.Construction on the Georgia plant is expected to begin in 2026, according to Rivian.Neither Rivian nor Stellantis responded to AFP queries on the implications of the new Trump policy for their projects.

As he looks at the ruins of his home razed when deadly fires tore through the Los Angeles area, Sebastian Harrison knows it will never be the same again, because he was not insured.”I knew it was risky, but I had no choice,” he told AFP.Harrison is one of tens of thousands of Californians forced in recent years to live without a safety net, either because their insurance company dropped them, or because the premiums just got too high.Some of them are now counting the crippling cost, after enormous blazes ripped through America’s second largest city, killing more than two dozen people and levelling 12,000 structures, Harrison’s home among them.His own slice of what he called “paradise” stood on a mountainside overlooking the Pacific Ocean, where Malibu runs into the badly hit Pacific Palisades neighborhood.The three-acre plot, which contained his home and a few other buildings, was always costly to insure, and in 2010 was already $8,000 a year.When the bill hit $40,000 in the aftermath of the pandemic, he decided he simply couldn’t afford it.”It’s not like I bought myself a fancy car instead of getting insurance,” the 59-year-old said.”It’s just that food for myself and my family was more important.”For Harrison, a former actor, the emotional strain of losing the home he had lived in for 14 years is magnified by the knowledge that without a handout from the state or the national government, he has lost everything — he even still has mortgage payments to make.”I’m very worried, because this property is everything I had,” he said.- Climate costs -Insuring property in California has become increasingly difficult.Well-intentioned legislation that prevents insurance companies from hiking prices unfairly has collided with growing risks from a changing climate in a part of the world that now regularly sees devastating wildfires near populated areas.Faced with burgeoning claims — more damage, and higher repair costs because of the soaring price of labor and materials — insurance companies turned tail and left the state en masse, dropping existing clients and refusing to write new policies.Even enormous names in the market, like State Farm and Allstate, have pulled back.Officials in state capital Sacramento have been worried for a while.Last year Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara introduced reforms aimed at encouraging companies to return, including allowing them more leeway to increase their premiums to better match their costs.But huge and inevitably very expensive fires erupting in what is supposed to be California’s rainy season — it hasn’t rained for eight months around Los Angeles — have reinforced the idea that the state is becoming uninsurable.”I don’t know now, because… my greatest fear was that we were going to have a catastrophe of this nature,” Lara told the San Francisco Chronicle at the weekend.Even the state-mandated insurer of last resort, a scheme designed to provide bare-bones coverage for those locked out of the private sector, could be struggling.The California FAIR Plan was created in 1968 and is underpinned by every insurance company that operates in the state, as a requirement of their license to operate.But the number of people now resorting to the scheme means its $200 million reserves are dwarfed by its liabilities. (A reinsurance sector helps to keep it liquid.)- ‘They’re going to drop me’ -With the enormous losses expected from the Palisades and Eaton fires set to test the insurance sector even further, California has issued an edict preventing companies from dropping customers or refusing to renew them in certain affected areas, for one year.That’s scant consolation for Gabrielle Gottlieb, whose house in Pacific Palisades survived the flames. “My insurer dropped a lot of friends of mine… and I’m concerned that they’re going to drop me as well eventually,” he told AFP.”They’re basically already putting it out there that ‘lots of luck after a year!'”Even in a best case scenario, home insurance looks set to be a lot more expensive in California, as state reforms filter through allowing increased prices in places more susceptible to wildfire.”Real estate and taxes are already very high in California,” said Robert Spoeri, a Pacific Palisades homeowner who was dropped by his insurer last year.”If the insurance gets even higher, who is going to want to live in this state?”

US President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he withdrew Secret Service protection to John Bolton, his former national security advisor and one of his most outspoken critics, because “you can’t have that for life.”Bolton, 76, who served in the White House during Trump’s first term and has been the target of an alleged Iranian assassination plot, said he was “disappointed but not surprised” by the president’s move.In remarks to reporters at the White House, Trump defended his decision and lashed out at his estranged former aide, calling him a “very dumb person” and a “stupid guy.””We’re not going to have security on people for the rest of their lives. Why should we?” the president said. “You can’t have that for life.””I thought he was a very dumb person but I used him well because every time people saw me come into a meeting with John Bolton standing behind me they thought that he’d attack them because he was a warmonger,” Trump added.The president also revoked Bolton’s security clearance, accusing him in an executive order of revealing “sensitive information drawn from his time in government” in a critical memoir he published in 2020.Bolton noted in a post on X that the Justice Department filed criminal charges against an Iranian Revolutionary Guard official in 2022 for “attempting to hire a hit man to target me.””That threat remains today, as also demonstrated by the recent arrest of someone trying to arrange for President Trump’s own assassination,” he said.Bolton said that although he was a critic of former Democratic president Joe Biden’s national security policies, “he nonetheless made the decision to extend (Secret Service) protection to me in 2021.””The American people can judge for themselves which President made the right call,” he added.The State Department has announced a $20 million reward for information leading to the arrest of the alleged Iranian mastermind behind the plot to assassinate Bolton, who is also a former US ambassador to the United Nations.US officials have also accused Iran of seeking to assassinate Trump to avenge the death of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in 2020 in a US drone strike.