As the Trump administration imposes deep cuts on foreign aid and renewable energy programs, the World Bank, one of the most important financiers of energy projects in developing countries, is facing doubts over whether its biggest shareholder, the United States, will stay on board. While the Trump administration has voiced neither support nor antipathy for the bank, it has issued an executive order promising a review of U.S. involvement in all international organizations. And Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint for overhauling the federal government, has pressed for withdrawal from the World Bank. If the United States were to withdraw, the bank would lose its triple-A credit rating, two credit-rating companies warned in recent weeks. That could significantly reduce its ability to borrow money. Roughly 18 percent of the bank’s funding comes from the United States. In an interview, Ajay Banga, the bank’s president, said his institution was fundamentally different from the aid agencies, such as U.S.A.I.D., that the Trump administration has been cutting. And he used some of the administration’s own talking points to argue the case: Investment in natural gas and nuclear power is good, he said, and the development projects funded by the bank can help prevent migration. He also said that the bank makes money and shouldn’t be seen as charity from U.S. taxpayers. “The World Bank is profitable,” he said, noting that it more than covers its own administrative costs even if most of its projects are designed to yield slim returns. “It’s not as though we take money every year from taxpayers to subsidize us and our salaries.” The concern about the bank’s future is heightened as the second Trump administration doubles down on its repudiation of climate projects and promotes an accelerated expansion of U.S. oil and gas projects. The United States wields enormous influence over the bank and effectively chooses its leader. David Malpass, nominated by President Trump in 2019, doubled the bank’s climate financing. But he resigned shortly after wavering during a 2023 public event at The New York Times on whether he accepted the scientific consensus that fossil fuels drive climate change. Mr. Banga was then nominated in 2023 by President Biden. He committed to channel 45 percent of the bank’s funds on climate related projects, an increase of 10 percentage points from his predecessor. The World Bank, created in 1944 to rebuild postwar Europe, is the world’s largest multilateral lender. It funds a range of projects for poor countries and emerging economies, such as the development of high-yielding crop seeds, the installation of school roofs that better withstand cyclones, and the construction of roads, bridges and all sorts of energy projects. The Bank has long been criticized by environmental advocates for supporting projects that harm communities and ecologies, including hydroelectric dams and gas pipelines. The bank faces an immediate problem. In December, Congress authorized the Biden administration’s pledge to contribute $4 billion in grants and loans for the world’s poorest countries through the bank. But a new, Republican-controlled Congress will need to agree to include annual tranches of that money each year in its budget. Mr. Banga said he expected the money to come through as part of normal country-to-bank transfer process. He also said he has met with lawmakers in Congress and with some current administration officials before they took their posts, but declined to say with whom. The Treasury Department did not respond to a request for comment, nor did the Senate Appropriations Committee, now Republican-controlled. The House Financial Services Committee, also Republican-controlled, declined to comment. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT But the bank also faces a more existential problem: Will the Trump administration continue its support for the institution, and if it does, will it back Mr. Banga’s goal to channel nearly half of its money into helping developing countries adapt to the hazards of a warming planet and build energy systems that contribute less to climate change? Mr. Banga said he did not know what the administration’s plans were. Nor has he yet had a direct discussion with anyone at the White House, nor with Elon Musk in his role as looking for ways to sharply reduce government spending. “Who knows what they’ll decide tomorrow? I’m trying to show them — I’ve been showing this for the past two years — what is it that I do that is useful to you,” he said. “What I do is I take your dollar and I multiply it.” Kevin Gallagher, director of the Boston University Global Development Policy Center, said that the White House could do one of three things. It could pull out and withdraw its money. It could pull out but keep its money in the bank. Or, it could stay in and demand that projects focus on fossil fuels. For the current financial year, about a half-percent of the bank’s $97 billion in investments are in gas, compared with about 3 percent for renewable energy projects. While gas burns more cleanly than coal or oil, its increasing use is contributing to a continuing rise in global greenhouse gas emissions, the primary driver of global warming. In any event, the uncertainty is likely to be felt this week at a meeting of finance ministers of the world’s 20 largest economies in Cape Town, South Africa. The theme for the G20 meetings this year is “solidarity, equality, sustainability,” which the administration considers at odds with its views on climate change and diversity policies. The Times reported last week that Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, would not attend the meetings.

President Trump’s policies could threaten many big green energy projects in the coming years, but his election has already dealt a big blow to an ambitious California effort to replace thousands of diesel-fueled trucks with battery-powered semis. The California plan, which has been closely watched by other states and countries, was meant to take a big leap forward last year, with a requirement that some of the more than 30,000 trucks that move cargo in and out of ports start using semis that don’t emit carbon dioxide. But after Mr. Trump was elected, California regulators withdrew their plan, which required a federal waiver that the new administration, which is closely aligned with the oil industry, would most likely have rejected. That leaves the state unable to force trucking businesses to clean up their fleets. It was a big setback for the state, which has long been allowed to have tailpipe emission rules that are stricter than federal standards because of California’s infamous smog. Some transportation experts said that even before Mr. Trump’s election, California’s effort had problems. The batteries that power electric trucks are too expensive. They take too long to charge. And there aren’t enough places to plug the trucks in. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “It was excessively ambitious,” said Daniel Sperling, a professor at the University of California, Davis, who specializes in sustainable transportation, referring to the program that made truckers buy green rigs. California officials insist that their effort is not doomed and say they will keep it alive with other rules and by providing truckers incentives to go electric. “We know we have a lot of work to do, but we also have tools to accomplish this,” said Liane M. Randolph, chair of the California Air Resources Board, the state body that sets clean air standards, at the ceremonial opening of a truck charging station near the Port of Long Beach in January. California requires truck manufacturers to sell an increasing number of zero-emissions heavy trucks in the state. This rule is more protected from any challenge by the Trump administration. In an agreement struck after the rule was introduced, the manufacturers committed to comply with its requirements regardless of the outcome of any future litigation, and California agreed to soften the rule. In theory, California’s plans to first electrify port trucks had a lot going for it. Fumes from such vehicles contribute to well-documented health problems like childhood asthma in neighborhoods near the ports and warehouses. Heavy-duty transportation in California is estimated to emit as much carbon dioxide, the main cause of climate change, annually as New Zealand. Also, these trucks travel distances that battery-powered semis can handle on one charge, roughly 200 miles. The hope was that — with the right regulatory sticks and carrots — carriers, truck manufacturers, charging companies and utilities would create an electric trucking network that would serve as springboard for a broader effort to remove diesel rigs from the state by 2045. It was not that simple in practice. Port truckers are overwhelmingly small operators that earn only slim profits. They typically prefer used diesel rigs that sell for as little as $40,000 and are reluctant to take on the financial risk of acquiring electric tractor-trailers, which can cost around $150,000 after government incentives. Without that aid, the trucks cost $500,000. Truckers make money by wringing as many hours as possible out of trucks. But electric rigs can take up to two hours to charge. “The reality is we don’t really expect to make much money with these trucks right now,” said Erick Gordon, vice president of Redefined Transportation, whose fleet of 25 diesel rigs moves containers from the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles to warehouses in the area. He is weighing whether to lease five electric trucks. The state had hoped to require newly registered port trucks to be zero-emissions vehicles — most such trucks today run on batteries. Since port truckers must retire diesel vehicles after a certain number of years, the rule would have gradually removed all diesel trucks from ports. California had sought a waiver for the rule from the Environmental Protection Agency because the regulation is stricter than federal standards. But the Biden administration did not approve the request in its final weeks. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Still, some trucking executives said they intended to keep deploying electric trucks. “It doesn’t really have any impact on where we’re going,” said Jessica Cordero, a vice president at NFI Cal Cartage, a large logistics company. “We have our own initiatives and goals.” NFI has 70 electric and 50 diesel trucks operating in California, and used grants to cover the cost of the vehicles. The electric fleet is turning a profit, Ms. Cordero said, in part because it costs less to fuel and maintain the vehicles. Rudy Diaz, chief executive of Hight Logistics, a port trucking company in Long Beach with 20 electric semis and chargers in its yard, said he, too, had achieved significant cost savings. But now that port truckers aren’t required to buy green vehicles, he fears that competitors deploying much cheaper diesel vehicles will have an advantage. “It makes me nervous — we invested in this infrastructure and these new trucks hoping that the waiver will pass,” he said, referring to the E.P.A. waiver. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Because regulators can no longer force truckers to go green, the financial carrots available to truckers are even more important. Climate United, a group of environmental nonprofits specializing in green investments, plans to spend $250 million it received in August from the Biden administration on 500 electric trucks that it intends to lease to small trucking firms through Forum Mobility, a company that also provides charging. The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach impose fees on diesel trucks. Some of those funds have been used to subsidize electric trucks and chargers. And last year, the California Air Resources Board decided that some of the money that electricity utilities get from selling clean energy credits would also be used to subsidize zero-emission trucks. Some people involved in the push think technological advances will help increase use of electric trucks. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Salim Youssefzadeh, co-founder and chief executive of WattEV, a truck charging company, said new, higher capacity chargers could allow trucks to charge in just 30 minutes, allowing truckers to get back on the road quickly. In some of its locations, WattEV is building solar and battery storage, which reduces its cost of electricity. Lower prices for electric trucks will also help. Wen Han started an electric truck company, Windrose Technology, in 2022 in China. He aims to start selling his vehicles in the United States this year for around $250,000 — well below the cost of those sold by more established manufacturers. He said he could make money at that price, even with U.S. tariffs, which are 40 percent for the truck Windrose makes, because of his low manufacturing costs. “Our job is to make diesel trucks obsolete,” he said, “and that happens with or without any sort of subsidies.” Bianca Calanche, whose company, Jaspem Truckline, operates at ports in the Los Angeles area, said it would be hard to deploy electric trucks because she didn’t have chargers in her truck depot. But she is still considering them, because she is worried that subsidies for electric trucks will run out and that the state will try to force companies like hers to electrify once Mr. Trump has left office. “This will still come back to us,” she said. “It’s California.”

As the Trump administration continues to withhold billions of dollars for climate and clean energy spending — despite two federal judges ordering the money released — concerns are growing that the United States government could skip out on its legal commitments. Typically, when the federal government spends money through a grant or a loan program approved by Congress, it signs a legally binding agreement, known as an obligation, to deliver the money. Companies, states and other recipients often spend millions of dollars to buy equipment, hire workers, build facilities and more, fully expecting that the federal government will make good on its promise to reimburse the funds. That expectation has been upended by the new administration. Following an order by President Trump, federal agencies, including the Energy Department, Environmental Protection Agency and the Agriculture Department, have paused funding for a wide range of obligated grants related to the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, sweeping laws that provided billions for climate and energy programs. In just a few weeks, the consequences have begun to be felt nationwide. School districts that planned to use promised federal dollars to buy electric school buses have seen their accounts frozen. Farmers and store owners that spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of their own money to replace old refrigeration systems or install solar panels are finding their requests for reimbursements delayed. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Two federal judges have explicitly ordered the Trump administration to end its freeze and let the money flow again. On Monday, one of those judges, Judge John J. McConnell Jr. in Rhode Island federal court, said the White House was defying his order by withholding funds. Jessica Tillipman, associate dean for government procurement law at the George Washington University Law School, said the administration’s actions had jeopardized the integrity of federal contracting. “They’ve taken a process that is longstanding, stable and reliable and turned the government into an unreliable business partner,” Ms. Tillipman said. “Who wants to do business with an individual or entity that doesn’t pay its bills, that doesn’t pay for work already performed and, in some instances, completely ceases communications?” Lawsuits filed in recent days have challenged the Trump administration’s actions, with companies arguing that the government freeze has hurt their businesses. On Monday, the sustainable development company Chemonics International sued the federal government alongside other plaintiffs for freezing its work with the U.S. Agency for International Development. The company said in a court filing that the agency owed roughly $103.6 million in outstanding invoices for work performed last year. In a statement, Chemonics said it had been forced to furlough more than 600 staffers in the United States and reduce the hours of 300 employees. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. While some agencies have said that the pause is temporary and that they are reviewing funds approved by the Biden administration to make sure they comply with the law, others have gone further. On Wednesday, Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, said in a video posted on X that $20 billion in agency funding meant to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions in low-income communities were a “rush job with reduced oversight” under the Biden administration. Mr. Zeldin suggested he would try to claw back money that had already gone out the door. Mr. Zeldin appeared to be referring to the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a program established by Congress in 2022. Under the program, the Biden administration had awarded $20 billion to eight organizations and deposited the money in Citibank accounts, with legal limits on how it could be used. In the video, Mr. Zeldin said, “The financial agent agreement with the bank needs to be instantly terminated.” “The days of irresponsibly shoveling boatloads of cash to far-left activist groups in the name of environmental justice and climate equity are over,” Mr. Zeldin said. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Zealan Hoover, who directed the implementation of Inflation Reduction Act programs at the E.P.A. under the Biden administration, said that the arrangement with Citi had been thoroughly vetted by the agency’s inspector general at the time, and that the federal government has been using private banks as financial agents since the 1800s. If either E.P.A. or Citi cuts off access to the funds, that could trigger further lawsuits. Some of the program’s recipients have already made their own agreements to lend money to other organizations for clean energy and energy efficiency projects. Mr. Hoover said that the fact that agencies were defying courts on the spending freeze — and threatening to claw back obligated funding — was a “major area of concern.” “It really calls into question the full faith and credit of the U.S. government as a counterparty to financial agreements,” he said. Aram Gavoor, a law professor at George Washington University, said many of the questions being argued in the courts aren’t clear-cut. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “There isn’t an immediate Supreme Court case or series of circuit cases that are recent that make it very clear what the outcome of litigation will be,” he said, adding that the administration’s actions and resulting lawsuits had “injected a strong degree of regulatory uncertainty” into federal contracting. At the Energy Department, officials have ordered an internal review of potentially billions of dollars worth of climate and infrastructure spending that was awarded by the Biden administration after the Nov. 5 presidential election, according to a memo sent to agency staff. The memo, dated Feb. 7, says that all Energy Department actions during the “transition period” before President Trump’s inauguration would be reviewed, and that financial transactions that used funds from the Inflation Reduction Act or bipartisan infrastructure law would have to be “reviewed and approved” by senior political appointees. Christopher S. Johns, the agency’s deputy chief financial officer, wrote in the memo that this review process followed recent district court orders on federal funding. But the document, which was first reported by E&E News, did not say what would happen if political appointees reviewed certain transactions and did not approve of them. It is not uncommon for a new administration to review existing programs, experts said. But it is unusual for agencies to halt a wide swath of obligated grants. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT In the months after Mr. Trump’s election, the Biden administration raced to commit billions of dollars in climate and clean energy spending, thinking that would make it hard for Mr. Trump to block the money. In January, the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office closed a $6.6 billion loan to help Rivian build an electric car factory in Georgia, and offered $22.9 billion in conditional loan guarantees to help eight electric utilities around the country modernize their power grids. Republicans criticized those moves at the time. Vivek Ramaswamy called the Rivian loan a “shot across the bow” to Tesla, a rival electric carmaker owned by Elon Musk. In December, three House Republicans sent a letter urging the Energy Department to “cease its campaign to quickly distribute federal funding before the incoming administration takes office.” Experts said it wouldn’t be easy for a new administration to revoke loans that have been closed. Under the Biden administration, the Energy Department’s loan office closed roughly $60.6 billion in loans and financial guarantees, while another $47 billion were conditional commitments that still need final approval. Kennedy Nickerson, a former policy adviser to the loan office and now a vice president for energy at Capstone, a research firm, said it would be “legally challenging and time-consuming” for the Trump administration to try to cancel final loan agreements. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Attempts to go after finalized loans could deter companies from doing business with the federal government, former agency officials said. Companies typically spend millions of dollars to go through an exhaustive vetting process by the loan program office. “If we get to conditional commitment with a loan program recipient, that’s the government’s credibility,” David Turk, the deputy secretary of energy during the Biden administration, said in a statement. “That’s the American people’s credibility on the line to follow through and make sure that we are providing that certainty for investment.” Mr. Trump’s energy secretary, Chris Wright, has said that he wants to use the hundreds of billions of dollars in remaining loan authority to advance the president’s agenda of affordable, reliable electricity. In an interview with Bloomberg on Tuesday, Mr. Wright was asked whether he might cancel loans that were already in place. “We will follow the law,” he replied. At least one project was exempted from the administration’s freeze. Montana Renewables had secured a $1.67 billion loan guarantee from the Biden administration to expand a plant in Great Falls, Mont., that converted vegetable oils and fats into diesel and jet fuel. Initially, the Trump administration had blocked the first scheduled $782 million payment while it reviewed the loan. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT But Senator Steve Daines, Republican of Montana and an ally of President Trump, said in a statement that he had pressed the White House to approve the payment because the project would “provide high-paying jobs, boost our economy and provide efficient biofuel production.” Energy Department officials didn’t explain why they allowed the Montana Renewables loan to go forward. Montana Renewables also declined to comment. “The Department of Energy is continuing to conduct a departmentwide review of all funding, including grants and loans, to ensure all activities are consistent with the law and in accordance with President Trump’s executive orders and priorities,” said Andrea Woods, an agency spokeswoman. “As part of this review process, the Department approved the scheduled disbursement of a loan for the expansion of a biofuels facility in Great Falls, Montana.”

Federal electricity regulators on Tuesday approved a proposal from the nation’s largest electric grid operator that could effectively give new natural gas power plants priority in connecting to the grid over renewable energy sources like solar and wind. The decision, by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, comes as the United States faces the prospect of the largest increase in electricity demand in recent decades. Technology companies are building hundreds of energy-hungry data centers across the country to power artificial intelligence models and other services. The ruling represents a win for companies involved in extracting natural gas and burning it to generate power — a group that strongly supported President Trump during last year’s election. Environmental groups and renewable energy developers criticized the decision by the five-person commission, which has a Republican chairman but a Democratic majority. The commission said it was approving the plan because it “reasonably addresses” a potential shortfall in the supply of power as demand for electricity increases. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “The proposal neither mandates nor prohibits the development of any particular generating facility, and it neither authorizes nor requires the adoption of a specific mix of generation resources,” the commission said in approving the proposal from PJM Interconnection, which runs the country’s largest electric grid, serving 65 million people in 13 states including Illinois, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Many electric utilities and grid operators have been arguing that the country needs more natural gas power plants, saying they can provide electricity more reliably throughout the day than wind and solar farms that are more dependent on weather conditions. The plan approved by the energy commission will allow PJM to give 50 new power plants a priority in securing a connection to its grid based on the plants’ size and ability to provide electricity around the clock. “Basically, it’s opening a window to allow projects — the high-reliability projects that can be built quickly — come online and help us address the short-term reliability issue,” said Jeffrey P. Shields, a spokesman for PJM. In practice, analysts said, the proposal will give natural gas plants a leg up over wind and solar projects.The plants that receive priority are “most likely going to be natural gas projects,” said Patrick Finn, a senior analyst at Wood Mackenzie, an energy consulting firm. “On a national level, we really haven’t had to deal with demand growth and its impacts on the grid in decades.” Renewable energy developers and environmental groups said the 50 new power plants “would jump the queue” and prolong the yearslong wait that new wind turbines and solar farms typically encounter when they try to join PJM and other regional electric grids. “PJM is not supposed to put its finger on the scale,” said Megan Wachspress, an environmental lawyer at the Sierra Club. Some developers said PJM’s proposal could lead to cost increase and derail their projects. That is because plants given priority will take up grid capacity that renewable developers had hoped to use. New suppliers of electricity to the grid are often required to pay for upgrades if their addition might strain the network. “PJM could torpedo existing projects while setting up new projects to fail,” said Evan Vaughan, the executive director at the Mid-Atlantic Renewable Energy Coalition, whose members include developers of wind, solar and battery projects. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT As the political wind shifts in Washington and electricity demand soars, utilities and grid operators around the country are delaying their transition to clean energy and increasingly leaning on fossil fuels. Georgia Power, which serves nearly three million customers in the South, said in January that it would delay the retirement of some coal and gas power plants into the late 2030s. Talen Energy is also keeping coal and oil power plants online until 2029, four years longer than its previous plan. At least two grid operators, Southwest Power Pool and the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, are considering similar proposals to PJM’s. Timothy Fox, a managing director at the consulting firm ClearView Energy Partners, said the daunting task of transitioning away from fossil fuels in the power sector had become more difficult with the recent surge in power demand. Renewables gained traction as their prices fell lower than those of fossil fuels, he said, but regulators and utilities are now more concerned about grid reliability. “It’s a lot easier to green up the grid when you’re not growing,” Mr. Fox said. “The U.S. is facing a significant power demand — the question is just how much.”

The warnings, on thousands of products sold in California, are stark. “Use of the following products,” one label says, “will expose you to chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm.” Now, new research shows the warnings may be working. A study published Wednesday in the journal Environmental Science & Technology found that California’s right-to-know law, which requires companies to warn people about harmful chemicals in their products, has swayed many companies to stop using those chemicals altogether. As it turns out, companies don’t want to sell a product that carries a big cancer warning label, said Dr. Megan Schwarzman, a physician and environmental-health scientist at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health and an author of the study. Combine that with the threat of lawsuits and reputational costs, as well as companies just wanting to do the right thing for health, and “it becomes a great motivator for change,” she said. California maintains a list of about 900 chemicals known to cause cancer and other health effects. Under the 1986 right-to-know law, also known as Prop 65, products that could expose people to harmful amounts of those chemicals must carry warning labels. Critics had long mocked the measure, saying the warnings were so ubiquitous — affixed to cookware, faux leather jackets, even baked goods — that they had become largely meaningless in the eyes of shoppers. But the latest study found that companies, more than consumers, may be most influenced by the warnings. To assess the law’s effect, researchers carried out interviews at 32 global manufacturers and retailers that sell clothing, personal-care, cleaning, and a range of home products. Almost 80 percent of interviewees said Prop 65 had prompted them to reformulate their products. Companies can avoid the warning labels if they reduce the level of any Prop 65 chemicals below a “safe harbor” threshold. A similar share of companies said they looked to Prop 65 to determine which chemicals to avoid. And 63 percent said the law had prompted them to also reformulate products they sold outside California. The American Chemistry Council, which represents chemical makers, said its members had “long strived to be good stewards of human health and the environment.” It said the Prop 65 list identified chemicals of concern without fully considering how likely they were to harm people using any specific product. “The mere presence of a chemical in a product does not necessarily mean there is a potential for harm,” said Andrew Fasoli, a spokesman for the group. No other state has a law quite like Prop. 65, requiring warnings on such a wide range of products about cancer or reproductive harm. New York enacted a more limited law in 2020 that requires manufacturers to disclose certain chemicals in children’s products and that bans the use of certain chemicals by 2023. Other states have laws geared toward disclosure of ingredients on labels. California, meanwhile, is pushing ahead. A 2018 change to Prop 65 has meant products are starting to carry even more specific labels. Some food and beverage cans, for example, may carry labels that warn that they “have linings containing bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical known to the State of California to cause harm to the female reproductive system.” The latest research is part of a larger effort to analyze Prop 65’s effect on people’s exposure to toxic chemicals. In a study published last year, researchers at the Silent Spring Institute and UC Berkeley found that in the years after certain chemicals were listed under the law, levels of those chemicals in people’s bodies decreased both in California and nationwide. That research came with a caveat, however. In some examples where levels of a listed chemical decreased, a close substitute to that chemical, potentially with similar harmful effects, increased. Prop 65 has no mechanism to check the safety of alternative chemicals. It suggested that stronger policies were needed at both the federal and state levels to study and regulate the thousands of chemicals on the market, Dr. Schwarzman said. “This is so much bigger than the individual consumer and what we choose off-the-shelf,” she said.

The largest refinery in the Midwest will have an unpalatable choice if President Trump imposes tariffs on Canadian oil: Pay more for the crude that it transforms into gasoline and diesel, or slash production. Both options threaten to increase prices at the pump, albeit modestly if Mr. Trump sticks with the 10 percent rate he announced this month. It is not clear whether the tariff will take effect after Mr. Trump decided to hold it in abeyance until at least early March. Yet this refinery, built around 1889 on the south shore of Lake Michigan, near Chicago, is a reminder of just how difficult it can be to undo trade ties that go back decades. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Mr. Trump, like many American leaders before him, appears to be yearning for a kind of energy independence that experts say is impractical and would not benefit individuals or the oil industry. “We don’t need their oil and gas,” Mr. Trump said last month, referring to Canada. “We have more than anybody.” It boils down to this: No matter how much oil the United States pumps — and it already is the top producer in the world by far — its refineries were designed to run on a blend of different types of oil. Many can’t function well without the darker, denser, cheaper crude that is hard to find domestically. Canada is flush with that oil, known as heavy crude. And facilities like this one, BP’s refinery in Whiting, Ind., were built around that supply. Companies have little reason to spend billions of dollars reconfiguring their systems for trade policy that may be fleeting. Not to mention there is uncertainty about the trajectory of global demand for gasoline and diesel, which some experts think could peak in the next decade as more people buy electric cars as well as trucks that run on natural gas and other fuels. “You can’t turn the Titanic on a dime, and the industry is kind of the same way,” said Rick Weyen, a retired refining executive who worked at the Whiting refinery for several years in the 1980s and ’90s. Whiting, a facility of tanks, towers and more than 800 miles of pipelines, is among the most dependent in the country on Canadian oil. On any given day, between 65 percent and three-quarters of the crude flowing through it is of the dark, viscous variety found in the oil sands of Alberta. The rest is lighter, and much of it can come from Texas, New Mexico and other U.S. states. BP can tweak its recipe — but only so much. Too little of the viscous stuff and the company would need to cut back its production of the fuels that power cars, trucks and airplanes. The refinery normally makes enough gasoline in a day to fuel more than seven million cars, or about 3 percent of the gas-powered vehicles on American roads. The oil and gas industry, which was one of Mr. Trump’s biggest supporters in last year’s election, has urged him to exempt energy from the tariffs on Canada, saying the taxes could cause prices at the pump to rise. (During the campaign, Mr. Trump pledged to slash people’s energy bills by more than half.) Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “It’s not as simple as switching things out,” said Chet Thompson, chief executive of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, a trade association. In a sign that Mr. Trump heard the industry, which gave more than $75 million to his campaign, he lowered the planned tariff on Canadian energy imports to 10 percent, from 25 percent. At that level, some consumers may see gasoline prices rise a few cents, but analysts said much of the added cost would be absorbed by Canadian oil producers and U.S. refiners that are effectively locked into doing business with each other. The effects could be more severe if Canada were to retaliate against Mr. Trump’s trade policies by making its oil more expensive, such as by imposing an export tax. A concurrent tariff on Mexican oil, even at 25 percent, is widely expected to be less disruptive on this side of the border because the United States imports less Mexican oil and the Gulf Coast refineries that use it have access to more alternatives than the refineries in the Midwest. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Hours before the tariffs were set to take effect, Mr. Trump put them on hold for at least 30 days in exchange for stepped-up border security measures from Canada and Mexico. A White House spokesman, Kush Desai, said in a statement that the deals demonstrated the president’s “commitment to using every lever of executive power to put Americans and America First.” Amid the uncertainty, Kelsi Thomas, a 23-year-old special-education classroom assistant, was trying to figure out what a North American trade war might mean for her. Gas prices — $3.10 a gallon last week at her local Love’s outside Chicago — were top of mind. “He was supposed to be bringing the prices down,” she said of Mr. Trump. Refining companies, many of which reported year-end earnings in recent weeks, have sought to reassure investors that they are prepared come what may. “Studying tariffs has been at the top of the list of things that we’ve been doing,” Maryann Mannen, chief executive of the fuel-making giant Marathon Petroleum, told Wall Street analysts last week. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “It’s likely,” Ms. Mannen added, “that we would see cost increases. We believe that the majority of that will ultimately be borne by the producer and then, frankly, to a lesser extent, the consumer.” The day after Mr. Trump said he was putting the levies on hold, Marathon Petroleum’s stock price climbed nearly 7 percent. BP invited a reporter and a photographer to tour the Whiting refinery last week but canceled a planned interview with the refinery’s top executive. In a statement, the executive, Chris DellaFranco, said, “We plan for every scenario.” As with so much else these days, people’s feelings about the prospect of tariffs often track how they see the president himself. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Connie Salas, a Republican who owns a flower shop in Whiting, brushed off the risk that she may soon have to pay more for plants like azaleas and cyclamen, or to fill up her delivery truck. “The fact that the prices have been ranging around the $3 mark, if it goes up to $3.50, no big deal,” Ms. Salas, 77, said of gasoline. “Whatever’s got to be done to make the country better is fine with me.” Humberto Martinez, a retired Whiting refinery worker, expressed more concern about Mr. Trump’s trade policy. He voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris. “My pension from BP doesn’t go up,” Mr. Martinez, 75, said. “What I’m scared of is I’m not going to be able to afford the same lifestyle.”

Ford Motor could be forced to lay off employees if the Trump administration ends subsidies and other financial support for electric vehicle manufacturing, the company’s chief executive said on Tuesday. Ford has invested heavily in factories to produce batteries and electric vehicles in Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee, Jim Farley, the Ford chief executive, said at a conference in New York. If Republicans repeal Biden-era legislation that allocated billions of dollars in subsidies and loans for the projects, Mr. Farley said, “many of those jobs will be at risk.” Mr. Farley was also sharply critical of President Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on cars and components from Mexico and Canada. Ford makes several vehicles in Mexico, including the Maverick pickup and Mustang Mach-E electric S.U.V., and engines in Canada. “A 25 percent tariff across the Mexico and Canadian border will blow a hole in the U.S. industry that we have never seen,” Mr. Farley said, according to a transcript of his remarks provided by Ford. “It gives free rein to South Korean and Japanese and European companies that are bringing one and a half to two million vehicles into the U.S. that wouldn’t be subject to those Mexican and Canadian tariffs.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Mr. Farley’s remarks at the conference, which was organized by Wolfe Research, offered a rare example of a corporate executive calling into question Mr. Trump’s policies or statements. In most cases executives have either offered praise or kept quiet, apparently out of fear they could prompt reprisals from the president. Even as he took issue with specific policies, Mr. Farley commended how Mr. Trump “has talked a lot about making our U.S. auto industry stronger, bringing more production here or innovation in the U.S.” This is especially important now, the executive said, because a “global street fight” is taking place in the auto industry as Chinese manufacturers expand overseas. “If this administration can achieve that, it would be one of, I think one of the most signature accomplishments,” Mr. Farley said. But he added, “So far what we’re seeing is a lot of costs and a lot of chaos.” Mr. Farley’s comments also highlighted a political quandary that Republicans will face as they try to reverse Democratic policies designed to promote electric vehicles. Much of the investment in factories has gone to states and congressional districts represented by Republicans whose constituents would be the ones to lose their jobs.

On Jan. 19, almost two weeks after the Eaton fire broke out near Altadena, Calif., technicians for Southern California Edison began testing electrical equipment near the origin of the blaze. They soon noticed small white flashes appearing on high-voltage transmission lines when power was being restored — signs that the system was functioning abnormally. The incident is one of several irregularities that Edison has been reviewing as it examines its electrical system in the wake of the deadly fire, said Pedro J. Pizarro, president and chief executive of Edison International, Southern California Edison’s parent company, in an interview Wednesday. He cautioned that the findings were part of the utility’s ongoing investigation and did not provide any conclusive evidence about whether faulty electrical equipment had ignited the blaze. But the flashes, which could be similar to ones captured on video near electrical equipment just moments before the fire broke out on Jan. 7, add to a growing pool of evidence linking the utility to the possible origin of the fire, which killed 17 people and destroyed more than 9,400 homes and businesses. It may take months for an official cause to be determined, but if Edison is found to be at fault, it could have sweeping consequences for how victims will be compensated — as well as how the utility, the state’s second-largest investor-owned utility, continues to operate. “While we do not yet know what caused the Eaton wildfire, SCE is exploring every possibility in its investigation, including the possibility that SCE’s equipment was involved,” Mr. Pizarro said. Edison filed its latest findings in a report to state regulators on Thursday. In a separate filing Thursday, Edison said its equipment also might be associated with the Hurst fire, which began the same day as the Eaton fire and burned about 800 acres in the Sylmar neighborhood, north of Altadena. Critics of the utility question why a comprehensive look at the cause of the Eaton fire took so long. They added that the mounting evidence suggested that the utility’s shareholders should be forced to cover the cost of damage from the blaze. “Clearly Edison should have known that when you experience flashes on a line, that could cause a fire, in the exact place where the fire started,” said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, a nonprofit group that represents taxpayers and consumers. “I don’t understand how they could not put two and two together.” A spokeswoman for the California Public Utilities Commission said that the agency did not determine the cause of wildfires, but that it would review whether a utility violated any rules or regulations after it had been found responsible for causing a fire. Utility equipment has been the source of some of California’s most deadly and devastating wildfires. After a series of blazes in the northern part of the state, including the Camp fire, which killed 85 people and destroyed the town of Paradise in 2018, Pacific Gas & Electric, the state’s largest utility, filed for bankruptcy. For much of the last decade, California has worked to reduce wildfires set off by electrical equipment by requiring the state’s investor-owned utilities to develop prevention plans that have included moving wires underground, installing weather stations to track storms and even deliberately cutting power to customers during dangerous conditions. As Edison began reviewing its data after the Eaton fire, it noticed that its system was under strain from 100-mile-an-hour winds that night, but it did not initially find any direct evidence suggesting its equipment was at fault. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The utility later expanded its internal investigation after The New York Times published a video recorded outside an Arco gas station in Altadena that captured flashes in the area of transmission towers in Eaton Canyon where the fire began on Jan. 7. The flashes occurred in short succession — one at 6:10 p.m. and then another three seconds later — before flames burst out below the towers. “After we saw the video, we went back and said, ‘Hey, are there things we just don’t understand here, and we should bring back into the fold?’” Mr. Pizarro said. The timing of the two flashes coincided with data released by Whisker Labs, a Maryland technology company that operates sensors in homes to help predict and prevent residential fires, that identified two huge transmission faults that originated in the Altadena area. The electrical disruptions were so strong that sensors registered the faults as far away as Portland, Ore., and Salt Lake City. Edison said it was now looking at several factors that it initially had not considered relevant to the fire in Eaton Canyon, including electrical faults at 6:11 p.m. Jan. 7 on the transmission line near a substation several miles from the origin point of the Eaton fire. It seemed a mystery, Mr. Pizarro said, that electrical problems so far from the origin point of the fire would play a role in igniting it. The utility is considering whether an inactive transmission line might have sparked if electrified equipment nearby caused the line to energize. Mr. Pizarro said the utility had found signs of damage from arcing — when electricity jumps from one place to another and lines can dangerously flash and spark — on some inactive equipment. But, he added, it is unclear whether that damage occurred before or after the fire. “What else happened in the system?” Mr. Pizarro said. “What else can we put together to try and concatenate some sequence of events?”

The Environmental Protection Agency is demoting career employees who oversee scientific research, the enforcement of pollution laws, hazardous waste cleanup and the agency’s human resources department and will replace them with political appointees, according to two people familiar with the approach. The move would give Trump administration loyalists more influence over aspects of the agency that were traditionally led by nonpartisan experts who have served across Republican and Democratic administrations. It would also make it easier for the Trump administration to bypass Congress. While those formally overseeing sections of the E.P.A. must be confirmed by the Senate, the new appointees would be able to assume the role of acting department heads, circumventing the need for congressional approval. “As is common practice and has become more prevalent across administrations, E.P.A. updated its organizational structure to match other federal agencies,” Molly Vaseliou, a spokeswoman for the E.P.A., said in a statement. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The E.P.A. is emerging as a case study in the lessons that Mr. Trump has learned from his first term in office, when career staff members often thwarted his administration’s efforts to sideline scientists and repeal air and water protections. Mr. Trump’s allies promised that in a second term they would be more prepared to swiftly begin dismantling the E.P.A., the agency that played a central role in the Biden administration’s strategy to combat climate change. Mr. Trump has stocked the agency with political appointees who have worked as lawyers and lobbyists for the oil and chemical industries. They include David Fotouhi, the nominee for deputy administrator, a lawyer who recently challenged a ban on asbestos; Aaron Szabo, a lobbyist for both the oil and chemical industries who is expected to be the top air pollution regulator; and Nancy Beck, a longtime chemical industry lobbyist, who is serving as a senior E.P.A. adviser on chemical safety and pollution. At the same time, there have been aggressive moves to deplete the E.P.A. work force. In recent days, the Trump administration warned more than 1,100 agency employees who had been hired within the past year that they could be “immediately” terminated at any time. The change to the senior management ranks affects four key areas of the E.P.A. They are the Office of Research and Development, the agency’s scientific research arm; the Office of Enforcement and Compliance, which is responsible for enforcing the country’s environmental laws; the Office of Land and Emergency Management, which oversees cleanups at some of the nation’s most contaminated lands and responds to environmental emergencies; and the Office of Mission Support, which manages human resources but also grants and contracts. Until the Trump administration, career employees held the second-in-command positions of “principal deputy assistant administrator.” Those career staff members automatically became the acting heads of their divisions in the absence of a Senate-confirmed assistant administrator to lead it. Last week the people serving in those roles were informed by Trump officials that their job titles would be changed, according to the two people familiar with the decision, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about personnel matters. The employees were told that their salaries and benefits would not change but that they would be moved to the position of “deputy assistant administrator,” which is effectively a demotion, the people said. The change is expected to take effect this week. So far, no political appointees have been named as replacements. Many of the emerging changes at the E.P.A. were mapped out in Project 2025, a conservative policy playbook that Mr. Trump has said he had not read. It calls for putting in place “reform-minded” political appointees to lead virtually all parts of the agency, including the scientific and enforcement functions. It is not without precedent to install political appointees in roles where they can carry out the president’s agenda without Senate approval. During the Biden administration, Joseph Goffman served as the principal deputy assistant administrator of the E.P.A. office overseeing air pollution. He held that job for three years, helping to write strict limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and automobiles. He was finally confirmed by the Senate in January 2024. Critics said the difference was that while E.P.A.’s air and water offices manage the bulk of federal regulation and are likely to reflect the president’s priorities, the moves from the Trump administration inject partisanship in segments of the agency that had been neutral. David Uhlmann, who led E.P.A. enforcement under the Biden administration, said of the moves that “when viewed alongside everything else taking place, they are yet another unfortunate attack on public servants who have dedicated their careers to public health and environmental protection.”

The Senate confirmed Chris Wright to lead the U.S. Department of Energy on Monday, putting the former oil executive in a key position to help shape President Trump’s energy policies. Mr. Wright, the founder and chief executive of Liberty Energy, a fracking firm, was confirmed by a vote of 59 to 38, with support from all Republicans present and a smaller number of Democrats. He would be the 17th secretary of energy, a position that was created in 1977. At his confirmation hearing, Mr. Wright said his top priority was to “unleash” domestic energy production, including liquefied natural gas and nuclear power. He also told Democrats that he believed climate change was a “global challenge that we need to solve” and that he would support the development of renewable energy like wind and solar power. At the same time, Mr. Wright said he would “work tirelessly” to support Mr. Trump’s “bold” energy agenda. The president has frequently dismissed climate change as a hoax, disparaged wind and solar power and said he wants to expand the use of oil, gas and coal, the burning of which is driving climate change. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The Energy Department plays a central role in developing new energy technologies. The agency oversees a network of 17 national laboratories that conduct cutting-edge research as well as a powerful loan office that has backed dozens of low-carbon energy projects, including battery factories in Ohio and Tennessee and two giant nuclear reactors in Georgia. Mr. Wright would also oversee approvals of liquefied gas export terminals, which the Biden administration tried to slow, angering industry groups. Mr. Trump has already ordered the Energy Department to restart reviews of proposed export facilities. The Energy Department is a sprawling agency. About 80 percent of the department’s $52 billion annual budget goes toward maintaining the nation’s nuclear arsenal, cleaning up environmental messes from the Cold War and conducting research in areas like high-energy physics. Under the Biden administration, the department aggressively supported new clean energy technologies such as advanced nuclear power, enhanced geothermal energy, green hydrogen fuels, next-generation batteries and more. Backed by new funding from Congress, it issued tens of billions in loans and grants to everything from firms making low-carbon cement to power companies building new transmission lines. At his confirmation hearing, Mr. Wright mostly declined to go into details about how he would run the department. Some conservative groups have urged Mr. Wright to reorient or even shutter the agency’s Loan Programs Office, which was given roughly $400 billion in loan authority by Congress to bring promising energy technologies to market. Under the Biden administration, the office finalized more than $60.6 billion in loans and loan guarantees to companies that were mining lithium, restarting a shuttered nuclear plant, converting wind and solar power into hydrogen fuels and more. It also issued $47 billion in conditional loans that have not been finalized. As of Jan. 17, there were still 160 companies seeking more than $200 billion in loans and loan guarantees. But the loan office’s work has largely been paused since Mr. Trump took office, and it is unclear what will happen to those applications. Most major environmental groups and many Democrats opposed Mr. Wright’s confirmation, saying that he downplayed the risks of a warming planet. In a social media post in 2023, Mr. Wright wrote, “There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition, either.” On a podcast last year, he said that climate change would have “a slow-moving, modest impact two or three generations from now.” On podcasts and in speeches, Mr. Wright has frequently made a moral case for fossil fuels, arguing that the world’s poorest people need access to oil, gas and coal to enjoy the benefits of modern life that rich nations take for granted. Still, some Senate Democrats joined Republicans in voting to approve Mr. Wright’s nomination. They included Ruben Gallego of Arizona, Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper of Colorado, Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Ben Ray Luján and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, as well as Angus King, an independent from Maine who normally caucuses with Democrats. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “While I do not agree with Mr. Wright on a number of issues, he has committed to working with us in good faith” on issues like investing in national labs and building out high-voltage power lines, Mr. Heinrich said last month. Mr. Wright graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and did graduate work on solar energy at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1992, he founded Pinnacle Technologies, which created software to measure the motion of fluid beneath the Earth’s surface. The software helped bring about a commercial shale-gas revolution. Mr. Wright started Liberty Energy in 2011, and the company has worked with others on geothermal energy and small, modular nuclear reactors. Mr. Wright holds 2.6 million shares in the company, which were worth roughly $47 million based on Monday’s closing stock price. In a written statement to the Senate he promised to step down from Liberty Energy and divest his holdings within 90 days after being confirmed. According to his ethics agreement, he is scheduled to get paid his last bonus from the company in March.