What will finally bring down Donald Trump? Maybe it’s climate change

Open this photo in gallery:

John Rapley is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail. He is an author and academic whose books include Why Empires Fall and Twilight of the Money Gods.

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. U.S. President Donald Trump’s approach to climate change illustrates this old rule.

Although few politicians are willing to go as far as Mr. Trump, calling climate change a “hoax” and going as far as to repeal the endangerment finding that allowed the government to regulate pollution, many will say however desirable action may be, we can’t afford the cost. Emissions controls, efficiency requirements, subsidies for renewable energy, carbon taxes, limits on oil exploration – all of these have a price. So, scrapping them is a sure vote-winner.

In his election campaign, Mr. Trump offered something for everyone in reversing the climate initiatives of previous administrations. Fossil-fuel companies would get favourable policies and a rollback of environmental regulations, which led the industry to bankroll his election campaign to the tune of US$75-million. Meanwhile, rolling back environmental initiatives promised cheap gas and cars to a working-class constituency which, living disproportionately in small towns and suburbs, depended on automobiles.

Opinion: What if we have already passed peak Trump?

The bet on Mr. Trump worked out well for the industry. Not only has he committed state resources to prise open oil fields in places like Venezuela, but he has aggressively given the industry patronage and favourable policies. Exxon Mobil’s share price, which had floundered for a decade before Mr. Trump’s return to office, is up nearly 50 per cent since he returned to office and some 30 per cent since just the start of this year. Such returns juice the stock market, which keeps the top part of his coalition happy.

But – the price tag. The big issue that propelled Mr. Trump back into the White House in 2024 was inflation. While he keeps saying he has brought prices back down, polling consistently shows that Americans remain deeply unhappy with inflation, with resentment strongest among lower-income voters.

These are, of course, the very sort of voters who helped propel him back into the White House, and there are three reasons they’re feeling especially gloomy about the economy. The first is that, by and large, they are sitting out the stock market boom, which is keeping Mr. Trump’s richer supporters happy with life. The second is that, as research by Federal Reserve economists has shown, the basket of goods consumed by working Americans has experienced higher inflation than that affecting richer Americans.

Opinion: The bridge that illustrates the lesson about the new U.S.

The third is that the average person doesn’t assess the inflation rate by reference to monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics reports, but by daily experiences. Repeated exposure to price increases, particularly in the grocery store or when dining out, serves as a daily reminder that life is getting more expensive.

In particular, fast food prices have risen sharply, at nearly twice the rate of groceries. That is making the most common form of dining out for working Americans increasingly unaffordable. And much of this comes down to the sharply rising price of beef, a key input in fast food. After a 16-per-cent increase in beef prices last year, the Department of Agriculture is predicting an added 10-per-cent increase this year. That helps explain why fast-food chains are struggling, even as fine dining establishments report strong sales.

The reason beef prices are rising so sharply is that the beef herd has diminished, owing to a prolonged drought in the American West. An increasing body of research, including some by the government, attributes the drought to climate change. It turns out that lack of precipitation is not the problem; rather, higher average temperatures are leading to more evaporation from the soil, drying out the land. Mr. Trump has responded by cutting relevant agency budgets.

All told, in his determination to deliver immediate benefits to his followers by scrapping environmental initiatives, Mr. Trump is creating added costs for them. This could turn into a major political headache for him. His political success has been built on a coalition uniting traditional, wealthy Republican supporters with a working-class base that historically voted Democratic, but warmed to Mr. Trump’s populist promises.

While his climate denialism is so far benefiting his rich backers, his mass base is feeling less happy with life. And if they stay home on election night in November, his whole agenda could come into question.

There’s a cautionary tale in this. To paraphrase Trotsky, we may not be interested in climate change, but climate change won’t allow us to escape its net. If we don’t pay the price of arresting it now, we’ll get the bill in due course – and the sticker shock could end political careers.