Former President Donald Trump plans to ramp up natural gas exports if elected this fall, and a surge in shipments could mean more business with one of the biggest U.S. foes: China.
That would put a second Trump administration in an awkward position, as much of his campaign platform focuses on combating the Asian economic giant — and slapping major tariffs on goods imported from it.
Trump is proposing to cut key regulations for the LNG sector and would likely advance controversial projects, such as a proposed Louisiana terminal known as CP2. If elected, the Republican leader is also expected to target low-hanging fruit to benefit the sector, such as the removal of a DOE requirement that forces companies to export LNG within seven years of project approval.
Analysts say the November election could directly affect the amount of U.S. LNG sold globally and to whom. Big volumes of U.S. LNG exports are all but certain to end up in China, the biggest new potential market for U.S. gas, even though trade protections against the country are in vogue in the U.S.
Many Republicans see an opportunity to force Chinese concessions with LNG.
“If you could provide an energy source to your great economic enemy that they’re paying cash for … if you could addict them to that, which would clean up their environment, wouldn’t that give you more leverage ultimately?” said Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), chair of the Science, Space and Technology Committee, at a June hearing.
Lucas said LNG export restrictions “limit your ability to create leverage with one of your greatest adversaries.”
China is reluctant to sign new long-term contracts with the U.S., in contrast to other suppliers, according to experts. Last year, China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. agreed to purchase LNG for 27 years from QatarEnergy, a rival to U.S. suppliers, after the two sides reached a similar agreement in 2022. China also imports massive LNG volumes from Australia, Russia and Malaysia.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration says Chinese gas demand ticked up 7 percent in 2023 over 2022, while the country’s LNG import demand increased 13 percent during that time period.
The Biden administration has advanced many gas export projects, but the Department of Energy paused approvals of new projects in January to review the economic and climate impacts of LNG, a fossil fuel that emits methane, a potent greenhouse gas, when burned or leaked. Environmental groups such as Sierra Club, Greenpeace and Evergreen Action are staunchly opposed to LNG.
The administration is also warning that U.S. gas will boost the globe’s second-largest economy.
“The biggest additional potential source for our LNG to go to is China,” Deputy Energy Secretary David Turk said in that June hearing at the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. “They could increase their LNG uptake 65 percent [by] 2030.”
Some Senate Democrats and Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) introduced legislation in February to ban U.S. LNG sales to China.
Even beyond economic tensions, the push for more LNG to China comes at a sensitive time in bilateral relations. The Chinese government recently suspended nuclear nonproliferation and arms talks with the U.S. amid increased tensions over Taiwan. The Federal Bureau of Investigations is warning of Chinese espionage.
At a sprawling press conference rife with personal attacks against Democratic White House contender and current Vice President Kamala Harris this month, Trump said he and Chinese President Xi Jinping “had a very good relationship until Covid,” a reference to the coronavirus pandemic whose origins date to Wuhan, China in 2019.
“We cannot have it where China is taking advantage of the U.S.,” Trump said, adding that he expects to “get along great with China” if he wins in November.
Karoline Leavitt, press secretary for the Trump campaign, did not comment on a question from POLITICO’s E&E News about how a future Trump administration would impact LNG exports to China.
Last year, Republicans in Congress tried to force the Biden administration to halt crude oil shipments to China from an emergency federal stockpile. Now, some Republicans are calling for restrictions on other exports to China, such as microchips, arguing U.S. chips could enable the country to lead the artificial intelligence race. House Republicans may look to pass several China-related bills next month, according to POLITICO.
Experts say tensions with China will likely persist for years.
“Whichever party wins the White House, and/or Congress, there’s going to be increasing pressure on China,” said Christopher Goncalves, a managing director and chair of the energy and climate practice at the Berkeley Research Group.
The Biden administration says Chinese production endangers U.S. companies. Treasury Department Under Secretary for International Affairs Jay Shambaugh argued recently that China plans to “push manufacturing even further as China’s growth driver, which means taking on an increasingly outsized share of global production,” adding that “China’s industrial subsidies are simply much larger than those of other countries.”
Tariffs on Chinese steel, electric vehicles and other goods have increased in the past four years, following a U.S.-China tariff war under the Trump administration. Biden’s team touts clean energy tax breaks and subsidies in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law as counters to China’s manufacturing acumen.
Dan Byers, vice president for policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute, said having China depend on the U.S. for energy is “generally a good thing.”
China was the sixth-largest destination for U.S. LNG exports in May, according to a recent DOE report. Just over half of the country’s LNG shipments went to Asia that month, followed by 38 percent going to Europe.
China relies on domestically produced coal and clean energy, LNG and Russian gas to fuel its growing economy and military might. A proposed — and still under negotiation — Russian gas pipeline to Northeast China, called Power of Siberia 2, could ply the Chinese economy with 50 billion cubic meters of gas per year, more than twice what was piped between the two countries in 2023.
‘Reliable trade’
During the Trump administration, China slapped tariffs on U.S. LNG. The country and its leaders have a particular approach to energy, observers said.
“They easily could have capitalized on our years of cheap, reliable LNG and become dependent on us. But they didn’t,” said Courtney Manning, senior research scientist at the American Security Project. “Beijing knows that if it starts to import or sign contracts on these 16-, 20-, 24-year terms, like it’s doing with other countries whose relationships are more normalized, that the US could use this to its advantage.”
On a Columbia University podcast released last month, Erica Downs, a senior research scholar at the school’s Center on Global Energy Policy, also rebuffed the argument that U.S. LNG can seriously influence Chinese policymaking, saying China has a “long-standing approach to energy supply security, which is to avoid becoming dependent on any single one supplier.”
Some observers say LNG is a bridge between the two dominant economies globally.
“These economies are so linked that it makes more sense to have reliable trade,” Nick Loris, vice president of public policy at the Conservative Coalition for Climate Solutions, said in an interview. “There’s obviously a lot of reasons that policymakers are concerned with the Chinese government, and those reasons are legitimate. But I think there’s a lot of reasons that we can’t just decouple from China either. That requires a balancing act.”
To boost U.S. LNG exports, the former president will first need to win at the polls. Then he’ll have to tackle serious challenges facing the industry, including international market competition, Biden administration regulations and environmental lawsuits.
Trump’s allies in the fossil fuel industry are pledging to overcome those barriers.
“For the environment, the case is clear: We need more American natural gas and more capacity to deliver LNG to allies,” Mike Sommers, president of the fossil fuel lobbying group American Petroleum Institute, said recently on X.
Project 2025, a blueprint for a second Trump administration partly penned by his former appointees and helmed by the conservative Heritage Foundation, calls for automatic LNG shipments to “all of our allies” and urges the removal of “political and climate change interference” in DOE approvals.
Trump has recently distanced himself from Project 2025 as criticism from Democrats on the initiative has grown. The director of Project 2025, Paul Dans, stepped down in late July.
LNG effects
Trump’s allies say deregulation would boost exports, create thousands of domestic jobs, and slash carbon dioxide emissions. That approach is backed by many Republicans and some Democrats in Congress.
An industry-backed study released in April found that U.S. LNG emits less greenhouse gas than coal in many global markets.
More than 50 House members, including several Democrats, urged DOE in a letter last month to “swiftly review and approve” new U.S. LNG projects, which they called a “boon for the U.S. and global economy.” Meanwhile, a new permitting bill gaining steam in the Senate would expedite LNG approvals.
But the November election comes as the policymakers and the American public debate the value of methane-emitting gas in a world increasingly ravaged by climate change. Many experts say the rosy picture of LNG painted by Trump’s allies is actually far more complicated.
Climate activists warn that LNG growth globally will quash goals to slash greenhouse gas emissions and pollute communities at U.S. production sites, while some national security experts say LNG exports threaten domestic energy reliability and U.S. national security goals.
Sierra Club and Greenpeace released a report last week that finds air pollution from LNG export terminals cause hundreds of premature deaths in the U.S. and billions of dollars in health costs, on top of damages to the climate.
Other analysts have said exporting U.S. LNG to China could help curb that country’s coal use.
Global demand for LNG is growing, even as many countries deploy more renewables and coal to meet rising electricity demand.
The International Energy Agency, a Paris-based organization designed to increase global energy cooperation, said in a recent report that LNG trade this year “increased at a rate well above its historical average,” noting that “both China and India returned to double-digit growth rates in the first half of 2024.” Shell, an oil and gas major, predicts 50 percent growth by 2040.
But Goncalves said Chinese demand for LNG is expected to moderate.
“It seems like the outlook for the kinds of robust Chinese demand growth we saw for the last decade is gone, and the expectations are now for much slower growth in China over the coming five to 10 years,” he said.
Growth prospects
The Biden administration announced a pause in January on LNG export application approvals to countries that don’t have a free trade agreement with the United States, a move praised by environmental groups and slammed by the oil and gas industry.
In July, a federal judge in Louisiana overturned the freeze, saying it appeared DOE’s decision was “completely without reason or logic and is perhaps the epiphany of ideocracy.”
This month, the Biden administration appealed the judge’s ruling with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
But U.S. LNG exports are poised to grow by more than 16 percent from 2024 to 2025, according to the Energy Department’s analytical agency.
Fauzeya Rahman, LNG market specialist at the commodity research group ICIS, said there are at least five projects awaiting approval at DOE after getting the sign off from another federal agency, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
More U.S. exports are a key plank in the Republican campaign to “drill, baby, drill.”
“I will approve the export terminals on my very first day back,” Trump said at a rally in Las Vegas earlier this year. “It’s good for the environment, not bad, and good for our country.”
Leavitt with the Trump campaign said the Biden administration is caving “to the radical demand of the environmental extremists.”
“The decision to block the approval of new facilities to export American natural gas is one more disastrous self-inflicted wound that will further undermine America’s economic and national security,” she said in a statement. “On day one, President Trump will unleash American Energy.”
U.S. producers are firmly backing Trump. Along with broad deregulation at the federal level, LNG is also a major priority for U.S. shale producers who sit on vast, untapped gas reserves and see their biggest growth and profit opportunities abroad.
Ellen Wald, an energy consultant and Atlantic Council fellow, predicted that a second Trump administration would speed up permitting of new LNG facilities to meet demand across the globe — including in Europe, where many analysts anticipate a decline in gas.
“U.S. LNG is the fastest-growing LNG,” she said in an interview. “The idea that ‘Oh, guess there’s so much approved already that we don’t need to approve more,’ I think is very, very short-sighted.”
“Your allies might really need more, and you don’t know what’s going to happen in 10 years,” she said.
Domestic challenges
Goncalves said Trump is likely to support LNG exports to China, while the picture is less clear for a potential Harris administration.
But Paul Bledsoe, a lecturer at American University’s Center for Environmental Policy, said Harris is likely to continue Biden’s policies when it comes to LNG exports, including supporting large exports to Europe.
“I expect that U.S. natural gas will continue to play a major role in displacing Russian gas under a Harris administration,” said Bledsoe, a former Clinton administration official.
Bledsoe, who said he expects new licensing criteria for LNG exports to come out of the DOE review, said he anticipates Harris will work to further curb methane emissions from the U.S. oil and gas industry.
The Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Harris’ emphasis on fighting inflation makes it clear that she will continue to support low-cost production, Bledsoe said.
Bledsoe said he doubts Trump could do much to increase U.S. LNG exports above the current record levels that have occurred under Biden.
“I actually don’t think that Trump policies would have influence at all on U.S. oil and gas production,” Bledsoe said. “Our production of oil and gas is really based on market conditions, rather than government conditions,” he said.
“U.S. exports will continue to grow, but less quickly than they have in the last four years,” Bledsoe said.
Steven Miles, a fellow for global natural gas at Rice University’s Baker Institute, said a second Trump administration would have to contend with a flurry of government initiatives — domestic and international — meant to curb the emissions footprint of natural gas.
The “methane fee,” a U.S. program created in the Inflation Reduction Act, requires oil and gas companies to pay if methane leaks exceed certain levels. Excess methane produced in 2024 would result in a fee of $900 per metric ton, with fees increasing up to $1,500 per metric ton by 2026.
Miles, who said the methane fee is an example of a “front-door tax” on U.S. LNG, noted that Qatar — one of the world’s top LNG exporters — doesn’t have to pay a methane tax.
“Every time we increase the costs on ourselves, and not on them, we have an economic issue,” Miles said in an interview.
Tyson Slocum, director of the energy program at consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said while Trump could direct his DOE to issue export authorizations immediately, those would be challenged quickly in court.
“Trump can do whatever he wants on Day One and claim that he’s going to immediately approve all of these pending and stalled projects, but that’s not going to make it happen,” Slocum said. “We’re going to exercise our rights as legal interveners and we’re going to tie this up in the courts.”
