Changes in US Environmental Policy Under the Trump Administration: An Economic Perspective1

Catherine Kling, Stephen Polasky and Kathleen Segerson
Additional contact information
Stephen Polasky: University of Minnesota
Kathleen Segerson: University of Connecticut

Environmental & Resource Economics, 2025, vol. 88, issue 9, No 2, 2317 pages

Abstract: Abstract Since President Donald Trump took office for a second time in January 2025, his administration has initiated a flurry of actions to fundamentally alter environmental policy in the US. These actions include, among other things, climate change policy, renewable and fossil-fuel energy production, public land management, water and air pollution policy, and methods that must be used by federal agencies when performing economic analyses of environmental regulations.The Trump administration has promoted these changes by saying that they will improve the economy and increase government efficiency.In contrast to this rhetoric, these changes are likely to reduce rather than increase economic efficiency, as well as increase costs and reduce welfare for American citizens and people around the world. In this paper, we document and discuss the multiple ways in which the Trump administration’s recent and proposed changes related to the environment violate foundational principles of environmental economics in ways that will likely lead to lower overall social welfare.

Keywords: Environmental economics foundations; Economic efficiency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10640-025-01025-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:enreec:v:88:y:2025:i:9:d:10.1007_s10640-025-01025-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... al/journal/10640/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10640-025-01025-6

Access Statistics for this article

Environmental & Resource Economics is currently edited by Ian J. Bateman

More articles in Environmental & Resource Economics from Springer, European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().