How Going Green Made Europe See Red

Hello and you're listening to Marketplace Morning Report live from the BBC World Service

very good morning to you. I'm Leana Burn. A year ago, today, President Biden signed the

Inflation Reduction Act into law. But America's attempt to tackle the climate crisis has

ruffled feathers as it includes protectionist measures that might hurt Europe's green industry.

Niklas Poitier is a researcher at the Brussels-based Think Tank

Bruges. Hi Niklas. Thank you very much for having me.

Niklas is a fair to say that the Inflation Reduction Act has been good for America,

but actually harmful for Europe. I don't think that's necessarily true. If we think about something

like the global commons of fighting climate change, I think the Inflation Reduction Act

in many regards has been good for everyone. But there are some problematic aspects to the Inflation

Reduction Act in particular, subsidies that intend to lure manufacturing to the United States,

which sometimes come at the detriment of the EU. And here, the Inflation Reduction Act has

put fuel to a global subsidiary around clean tech that is probably not an interest of

fighting climate change, and certainly not in the interest of European businesses.

I mean, there were a lot of worries in Europe that it could actually divert investment

and jobs from the continent. Has that happened?

So far, we cannot really tell. What we can't say is that there has been massive investments

in the United States. We also have seen massive investments in other countries,

including the EU, but also Canada, but all of these investments have been supported by massive

subsidies. And it's still a little bit too early to tell, to which extent, the investment that

we see in the US came to the detriment of other economies, or to which extent integrate with

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