Trump’s budget has far-reaching implications

If passed in its current form, President Donald Trump’s proposed budget for 2018 will take the United States out of the climate change business. That means Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will be facing tough decisions about how much more financial pain he is willing to inflict on Canadian businesses, industries and consumers through carbon pricing.

This by imposing a national carbon price that our largest trading partner does not have. Trump’s budget plan, which must be approved by Congress, hits the U.S. Environmental Protection hardest of any government agency, including a 31 per cent cut to its $8.2 billion annual budget.

It will reduce the agency’s 15,000-member staff by 19 per cent, or about 3,000 positions, and eliminate 50 EPA programs, including funding for former president Barack Obama’s signature climate change initiative, the Clean Power Plan.

“Regarding the question of climate change, I think the president was fairly straightforward,” Trump budget director Mick Mulvaney said. “We’re not spending money on that anymore. We consider that to be a waste of your money to go out and do that, so that is a specific tie to (Trump’s) campaign.”

Trump’s proposed cuts to the EPA aren’t surprising given that he once said he believed man-made climate change was a hoax created by China’s government to hurt American business. Trump also signalled his intentions when he appointed Scott Pruitt as EPA administrator. Pruitt disputes the scientific consensus that humans are today the leading cause of climate change. In his former position as Oklahoma’s attorney-general — an oil-producing state — Pruitt sued the EPA more than a dozen times.

If Trump succeeds in getting this portion of his budget approved, it will mean America’s participation in the 2015 Paris climate treaty, signed by Obama and Trudeau, will be over, regardless of whether Trump ever formally withdraws from it.

Trump has also ordered a review of U.S. auto emission standards, widely seen as a first step to loosening them, which also has financial implications for Canadians if the Trudeau government decides to keep its current standards in place.

The question is, how much more taxpayers’ money is Trudeau willing to spend on manmade climate change going in the opposite direction of the U.S., our largest trading partner by far?