According to recent election poll averages from RealClearPolitics and 270towin, Donald Trump is ahead of Joe Biden.
An average from the former on May 3 has Trump ahead by 1.3 percentage points, at 46.5 percent to 45.2 percent, and an average from 270towin on the same day has Trump leading by two percentage points, at 46 percent to 44 percent. The RealClearPolitics poll average also shows Biden was last ahead of Trump more than seven months ago, on September 11, 2023.
So, is Trump likely to become president again in 2024? What would that mean for U.S., and global, oil and gas? These were the questions Rigzone posed to the top brass at the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, to get their take on the situation and the potential effects on the industry.
“No one knows who will be elected president, and politics is full of surprises,” Diana Furchtgott-Roth - Director, Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment, and The Herbert and Joyce Morgan Fellow in Energy and Environmental Policy, at the Heritage Foundation – told Rigzone.
“Today President Trump is ahead in the polls but May polls mean nothing for November elections,” Furchtgott-Roth added.
If President Trump were elected president, one of the biggest changes would be in energy policy, the Heritage Foundation representative told Rigzone.
“President Trump would roll back the Biden executive orders and regulations that prevent use of American natural resources,” Furchtgott-Roth said.
“He would encourage production of oil and natural gas both onshore and offshore, he would end preferences for wind and solar, as much as possible, working with Congress,” she added.
“He would throw out the regulations that require mandatory shares of new cars and heavy trucks to be electric by 2030, he would move away from mandatory closure of power plants by 2040, and he would end appliance regulations that require electric appliances,” Furchtgott-Roth continued.
Benjamin Zycher, a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute told Rigzone that he thinks the likelihood that Trump will be elected is less than 50-50, “barring some such major event as a health crisis for Biden”.
“He is leading in several polls, for both the electorate as a whole and in several of the swing states, but that seems to be among registered, rather than likely voters, the implications of which are murky,” Zycher said.
“But the Dems have not unleashed half a billion dollars of negative ads on Trump, and his legal travails have had the effect of keeping him, to a substantial degree, off of major media and the like - no one reads Truth Social - and so his juvenile insults and general coarseness are not front and center, as they will be once the campaign gets going,” Zycher added.
The American Enterprise Institute representative told Rigzone that a Trump administration would be vastly better for U.S. fossil energy investment and output, and for the increased national wealth that such production represents.
“An important caveat is Trump’s preference/proposal for an expansive tariff regime, the resulting impacts on foreign nations’ tariff policies, exchange rates, etc are difficult to predict ex ante,” Zycher said.
“It will take some time to undo the Biden regulatory onslaught, even if much of it is thrown out by the courts on major questions grounds, unless both houses of Congress are in GOP hands, in which case Congress could eliminate most of it in legislation, although I am not sure whether 60 votes would be needed in the Senate,” he added.
“There is a real set of problems inherent in the up-and-down swings in regulatory policies as the White House changes parties, only one of which is the adverse effect of uncertainty on the investment climate,” he continued.
Michael Rubin, another Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told Rigzone that no one has a crystal ball about the elections.
“With two octogenarians running, anything could happen,” he said.
“The only thing that can be said with certainty is that if Trump wins a second term, he will be more effective in implementing whatever agenda he has because his team will understand how the bureaucracy works,” he added.
“There will no longer be a learning curve,” Rubin continued.
Both RealClearPolitics and 270towin describe themselves as non-partisan. The next U.S. Presidential election is scheduled for November 5, 2024. Trump served as U.S. President from January 20, 2017, to January 20, 2021. Joe Biden has served as the U.S. President from January 20, 2021.
To contact the author, email andreas.exarheas@rigzone.com
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