China’s leaders must be wondering whether they are hallucinating or the United States’ political class have lost their minds, committing economic and geopolitical self-harm on a breathtaking scale.

Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill” marks a wholesale retreat from swaths of advanced manufacturing and energy technology. It abandons a central front of the Sino-American superpower contest without a fight.

Trump’s big, beautiful bill is a big step backwards for America.Credit: AP

“Utterly insane and destructive. The bill will cause immense strategic harm to our country,” said Elon Musk, now the arch-apostate, perhaps soon to be punished, asset-stripped and deported.

The big bill is the latest in a series of Luddite measures that let China run away with the electro-tech revolution and much of the future global market for cars, trucks, short-haul aviation, home heating and cooling, smart grids, power storage and the products that deliver the cheapest energy ever known to man.

The think tank Ember says China is electrifying its economy at a rate of 10 percentage points a decade. It has already surpassed 30 per cent of final energy, well on its way to becoming the world’s first electro-superpower.

The US has been stuck in the low 20s since 2008, lulled into complacency by its fracking boom. Europe has missed the boat too, without the same excuse. It talks big on electrons without delivering much, while clinging to imported molecules for its economic existence, failing to compete successfully on either.

The woke and the anti-woke are still arguing about renewables, but we are past that developmental phase. The big trillions will be made in the ways we use electricity. The International Energy Agency thinks the vast electro-tech market will be eight times larger than renewables by 2035.

Trump’s America is betting that it can freeze time and stop this, doubling down on fossil fuels and hoping to force others to go with them as a condition for military protection and market access. Trump is linking trade........

© The Sydney Morning Herald