Donald Trump has promised to cut energy costs, but an expert said some of his policies might end up hurting his own supporters.
The price of natural gas looks likely to jump despite record-high production, which could undermine the president-elect's campaign pledge, and political analyst Leah Wright Rigueur told CNN that energy costs are largely outside the government's control.
"I think, you know, the secretary of the interior, I think the secretary of energy both understand that or the newly appointed, the nominated secretaries understand that," said Rigueur, an assistant professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. "What is more interesting, I think right now is the fact that under [president Joe] Biden, these kind of energy policies, particularly under the Inflation Reduction Act, have actually been deeply beneficial to red states and blue states, but in particular red states, in some cases rescuing manufacturing, rescuing energy production, rescuing all kinds of industry, and so there is a push amongst Republicans, particularly Republican congressmen, to keep those acts and to keep those things in place."
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"So I actually wouldn't be surprised if the Trump administration tries to take advantage of the benefits that are coming as a direct result of Joe Biden's energy production and energy laws and infrastructure that he has been put in place, but that Democrats actually have not taken advantage of over the past several years, at least in terms of messaging," she continued. "So I wouldn't actually be surprised to see that, because there's very little that Donald Trump can actually do to increase that won't actually offset or create a depression or create a recession, will cause the loss of jobs and will hurt, actually, those red states that he claims that he wants to protect."
"I actually think that this is far more of a [public relations] campaign on the part in messaging, on the part of Donald Trump and taking really taking advantage of the work that the Biden administration has been putting in place," Rigueur added. "The last thing that I'll say here, too, is that it also matters that Elon Musk is a huge proponent of clean energy and of these infrastructure because he takes advantage of it with Tesla and his other clean energy projects. So I would pay attention to that, to what does Elon Musk think on these issues, because that's probably the direction that the Trump administration will be going in during these first couple of months."
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