Ford School Professor Barry Rabe was quoted in a recent E&E News article titled “Can Trump deliver on immense energy, climate promises?”
Throughout the campaign, President-elect Trump promised to repeal or replace many of President Obama’s environmental and energy policies. In this article, Rabe questions the likelihood of Trump being able to keep these campaign promises.
“We know even when presidents win a decisive victory and have majorities in their party in Congress, they don’t get everything they want in that first two-year window,” says Rabe, citing President Obama’s unfulfilled ambitions for climate change legislation after the 2008 election.
Even if President Trump has executive powers, public opinion will impact his decisions to roll back environmental and energy regulation. The new administration may not want to “overplay its hand and go too far” given recent crises in Flint and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, says Rabe.
Rabe, who is working on energy and environmental policy for a presidential transition project sponsored by the National Academy of Public Administration, writes, “It’s really hard to know over the course of a two- or four-year window what can be accomplished.”
Barry Rabe is the J. Ira and Nikki Harris Family Professor of Public Policy at the Ford School and the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Environmental Policy in the School of Natural Resources at the University of Michigan.