Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Wednesday, December 18th.

Today on Forbes, Biden's EV battery boom is coming, whether Trump wants it or not.

In 2022, President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, the single biggest effort to combat

climate change in American history.

President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to gut it, deriding it as part of the, quote,

green new scam. But because the IRA has already pumped billions of dollars into clean energy

projects across the country, especially battery-related ones, much of it to red states, he's

unlikely to pull it off. With this specifically, there is little he can do to slow Biden's agenda.

Much of the $400 billion of IRA funds for clean energy, and some from the bipartisan

infrastructure law, have already been dispersed as multi-billion-dollar loans and grants

that Trump can't undo. Simon Moore's CEO of London-based benchmark mineral intelligence

told Forbes, quote, for the battery industry, $110 billion has been handed out and can't be repealed.

The vast majority will come online during the Trump 2.0 years,

so whether President-elect Trump likes it or not,

he will oversee the great U.S. battery boom.

But that's no guarantee that America's growing electric vehicle industry

will keep surging under the incoming president.

One challenge is the potential elimination of

$7,500 tax credits for EV purchases that help keep them more affordable. A bigger one may be Trump's

threat of levying 60% tariffs on Chinese goods. While many electric vehicles sold in the U.S. are built

here, the vast majority of their battery

components and materials come from China.

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