The choices made by the United States, the world’s second-largest emitter, reverberate far beyond its borders, shaping not only global emissions trajectories but also the political and financial space available for climate action across the Global South. A decade after the Paris Agreement, the pace of climate solutions has yet to overtake the accelerating curve of environmental damage. In the next 10 years, the highest risks will be extreme weather, climate change failure, and environmental degradation.

In this context, the contrasting climate policies of two U.S. presidents, Trump and Biden, illustrate sharply different responses to the crisis. It shows that Paris’s effect unleashed 2 curbs: (1) damages, impacts, threats to climate; (2) solutions (transformational shifts to renewable energies). Where one curve escalating impacts, the other charts accelerating innovations. But here’s the challenge: these two curves have not yet intersected. The pace of climate solutions, still growing, but not bend the damage curve. The emissions are still too high, domination of fossil fuel dependence and also deep global inequality. In this context, how national leaders define the climate problem shapes whether and how these curves might converge.

In the US, two contrasting administrations of Joe Biden and Donald Trump present different policy responses fundamentally. As an outcome, their policies diverged in urgency and direction. The first Trump administration (2017-2021) shows disappointment with the Obama-Biden era, rolling back from environmental regulations and defining the real problem was not climate change. It’s because international pressure and overregulation. Historically, at the first period of his presidency, America was reeling from pandemic and also Russia-Ukraine conflict. This reinforce Trump’s “America First” ideology, believed that environmental agreements and clean energy investments which promoted by Obama-Biden administration undermined US energy independence and weakened national resilience. For instance, Trump’s decision to repeal Clean Power Plan in Obama era illustrated his administration’s in deregulatory stance to climate action. In this position, Trump is quite realistic by looking at the grassroots level of society, where America was suffering in recovering its economy after the pandemic as well highlighting the vulnerability of global supply chains, hence prioritizing climate investment and shifting to renewable energies at that time did not provide “direct” benefits to American people.

The energy transition defined as threats to jobs in traditional sectors such as coal, it will increase unemployment rates due to the closure of coal mines, and this is what he actually feared. That is why Trump continues to change the narrative and say that “Climate change is a hoax” or “Why we pay a high price now for something that doesn’t have an impact 30 years from now?”. External conditions made Trump deregulates and reconsiders climate policies and pause them, the mandatory urge to restore the economy by returning to fossil fuel based energy. Reminding that climate investment requires a lot of costs and margins do not come in the short term. There is something that is rarely seen by policymakers who support climate policies, which is "climate benefits are only seen globally, not nationally". The climate policy of the Paris Agreement turns out to only benefit developing countries, because developing countries are still allowed to produce carbon, the US also has to pay a high price for investment in renewable energies, and there is also no "equivalent benefit" from others.

On the other side, after the Trump’s administration, in part in response to Trump’s climate rejection in clean energy industries, Biden (2021-2025) entered to conceive climate change as a threat and also business opportunities. Climate change intensifies existing threats just like coronavirus pandemic, the longer US waits to act, the harder and costlier it will be to contain its consequences. In his administration, he highlighted the historical move where implementing the Inflation Reduction Act into law since 2022, the most comprehensive climate regulations in the USA by investing $370 Billion for renewable energies and decarbonization. He also combined the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, where the law is projected to reduce emissions in 2030 by about 1 gigaton, which is 10 times more climate benefit than any other legislation in the history. The law’s become transformative and new, tax credits expanded for clean energy, infrastructures, vehicles, fuels, and manufacturing. In this era, firms are investing in technological innovation and co-locate manufacturing to commercialize and produce clean energy technologies domestically, these movements advocated by the climate policies initiated by Biden. This shows that Biden also wants to “reindustrialize America” in a green way through clean energy, the great green growth era. But it also serious challenges, such as IRA hasn’t significantly lowered prices. At the bottom level, the price of electricity was still expensive and there was no cheap energy. Economic benefits from climate policy not achieved, not all economies have successfully built large industrial sectors in support of decarbonization. Adding the homework burden for 2025’s Trump era to replace the state money that has been invested in green projects.

As a result, even though Biden has tried to tie climate policy with the promise and projects, the economic benefits haven’t materialized everywhere. Building strong clean energy industries has proven harder than expected. What is the big reason? political power of industries is still heavily invested in fossil fuels. Sectors like wind, solar, battery, and EV are trying to grow. But, they are up against a well-established energy system that still runs smoothly on coal, oil, and gas. For example, traditional car manufacturers and fossil fuel producers have often pushed back against the clean energy shift. This is what we see, as Trump showing up as political opposition against Biden drawing back from renewables to conventional energy. That kind of resistance has made it harder to pass policies that support clean technologies or help zero-carbon businesses scale up. Ironically, this happens even in places where clean energy is now cheaper than the old.

For the Global South, the contrast between Biden’s climate ambition and Trump’s rollback highlights a critical vulnerability: the dependency on global leadership that remains politically volatile. Sustainable development in the Global South demands not only climate finance and technology transfers, but also predictable, long-term commitment from industrialized nations.