Can you hear it — that loud roar coming from the East? It’s the sound of 1.4 billion Chinese laughing at us.

你听到从东方传来的巨响吗？那是14亿中国人嘲笑我们的声音。

The Chinese simply can’t believe their luck: that at the dawn of the electricity-guzzling era of artificial intelligence, the U.S. president and his party have decided to engage in one of the greatest acts of strategic self-harm imaginable. They have passed a giant bill that, among other craziness, deliberately undermines America’s ability to generate electricity through renewables — solar, battery and wind power in particular.

中国人简直不敢相信自己的运气：在耗电的人工智能时代即将到来之际，美国总统和他的政党堪称能想象到的最严重的战略自残了。他们通过的一项庞大的法案有着各种疯狂的内容，其中包括故意破坏美国通过可再生能源发电的能力，尤其是太阳能、电池和风能。

And why? Because they view those as “liberal” energy sources, even though today they are the quickest and cheapest ways to boost our electricity grid to meet the explosion of demand from A.I. data centers.

为什么？因为他们认为这些是“自由派”能源，尽管如今这些能源是促进我们的电网发展以满足人工智能数据中心激增需求的最快捷、最廉价的方式。

It is exactly the opposite of what China is doing. Indeed, Beijing may have to make July 4 its own national holiday going forward: American Electricity Dependence Day.You cannot make this up: Even Saudi Arabia is doubling down on solar power to meet the needs of the A.I. data centers it wants to recruit from the West, while Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” actually does just the opposite. It quickly phases out tax credits enjoyed by utility-scale solar and wind — as well as electric vehicle tax credits. This virtually guarantees that China will own the future of solar energy, wind power and electric cars and trucks, as well as autonomous vehicles.

这与中国的做法恰恰相反。事实上，北京可能要把7月4日定为自己的全国性节日才行——美国电力依赖日。这真是编都编不出的情节：就连沙特阿拉伯也在加倍投资太阳能，以满足其想从西方引进的人工智能数据中心的需求，而特朗普“大而美法案”实际上恰恰相反。该法案将迅速逐步取消公用事业规模的太阳能和风能享有的税收抵免，以及电动汽车的税收抵免。这几乎保证了中国将拥有太阳能、风能、电动汽车和卡车以及自动驾驶汽车的未来。

Thankfully, Trump and friends did keep until 2036 a major Biden-era tax credit for companies that build other emissions-free technologies like nuclear reactors, hydroelectric dams, geothermal plants and battery storage. The problem is that it can take up to 10 years to build a nuclear plant in America, and, as The Times reported, the bill added “complex restrictions” to the battery credits “that bar recipients from having ties to ‘prohibited foreign entities’ like China.’’ As a result, “some worry that the restrictions are so complicated that the credits could end up being unusable for many projects.”

值得庆幸的是，特朗普和他的朋友们确实将拜登时代的一项主要税收抵免政策保留到了2036年，该政策适用于建造其他零排放技术的公司，比如核反应堆、水电站、地热发电厂和电池储能系统。问题在于，在美国建造一座核电站可能需要长达10年的时间，而且，正如《纽约时报》报道的那样，该法案给电池抵免额度增加了“复杂的限制”，“禁止接受者与中国等‘被禁止的外国实体’有联系”。因此，“一些人担心，这些限制太过复杂，最终可能会导致很多项目无法使用抵免。”

In sum, this dog’s breakfast of a bill — rushed through without a single congressional hearing with independent energy experts or even one scientist — is sure to put at risk billions of dollars of investments in renewable energy, mostly in Republican states, and potentially kill the jobs of tens of thousands of U.S. workers. By the way, the bill also bans for 10 years a first-ever fee on excess methane emissions from oil and gas production, a key driver of global warming.

总而言之，这个乱七八糟的法案没有举行任何独立能源专家——甚至没有一位科学家——的听证会就匆匆通过了，肯定会危及可再生能源领域数十亿美元的投资（其中大部分是在共和党控制的州），并有可能使上万美国工人失去工作。顺便说一下，该法案还首次禁止对石油和天然气生产过程中排放的过量甲烷征收费用，为期10年，甲烷是全球变暖的主要驱动因素。

So, in one fell swoop, this bill will make your home hotter, your air-conditioning bill higher, your clean energy job scarcer, America’s auto industry weaker and China happier. How does that make sense?

因此，这一法案将使你的家更热，空调费用更高，清洁能源产业岗位更少，让美国汽车工业更弱，让中国更开心。这怎么说得通呢？

It doesn’t. And the person in America who knows that best is actually Elon Musk. It is really sad to me that Musk, who is without question one of America’s greatest manufacturing innovators — having started globally leading companies making electric vehicles, renewable rockets, battery storage and telecommunications satellites — has discredited himself with so many voters because of his dalliance with Trump and because of his Department of Government Efficiency’s capricious cuts to the government work force. Because of that, many will not understand the vital truth that Musk has been shouting to his fellow Americans: Trump’s bill is “utterly insane and destructive. It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future.”

说不通。在美国，最了解这一点的人实际上是埃隆·马斯克。毫无疑问，马斯克是美国最伟大的制造业创新者之一，他创立了全球领先的公司，制造电动汽车、可回收火箭、电池存储和通讯卫星，但由于他与特朗普的暧昧关系，以及他的政府效率部反复无常地裁撤政府工作人员，他在这么多选民心目中失去了信誉，这让我感到非常难过。正因为如此，许多人不会理解马斯克一直在向他的美国同胞大声疾呼的一个至关重要的事实：特朗普的法案“完全是疯狂和具有破坏性的。它给过去的行业提供了援助，却严重损害了未来的行业。”

This is not complicated and this is what China knows: There has never been a more intimate connection than there is now between a nation’s ability to generate huge amounts of electricity at affordable prices (and in the cleanest way possible) and its ability to develop A.I. engines that consume huge amounts of electricity as they learn and generate answers that could give us the tools we need to cure diseases, discover new materials and even produce the holy grail of cheap, clean, climate-saving fusion energy.

道理并不复杂，中国就很清楚：一个国家以可承受的价格（并以最清洁的方式）生产大量电力的能力，与其开发人工智能引擎的能力之间的联系从来没有像现在这样紧密。在学习和产生答案的过程中，人工智能引擎会消耗大量电力，而这些答案可以为我们提供治疗疾病、发现新材料，甚至廉价、清洁、拯救气候的核聚变能源这一圣杯所需的工具。

To put it differently, there has never been a more intimate connection between the amount of cheap, clean electricity a nation can generate for A.I. models and its future economic and military might.

换句话说，一个国家为人工智能模型生产的廉价、清洁电力的数量，与这个国家未来的经济和军事实力之间，从未有过如此密切的联系。

That is why Musk and many others find it so “insane and destructive” that Trump and his G.O.P. cult have rejected an energy policy of “all of the above as clean as possible as fast as possible” — oil, natural gas, coal, wind, hydro, nuclear, solar, geothermal, hydrogen — that is always working to phase out the dirtiest for the cleanest, the way China often has. Instead, Trump has chosen instead to kneecap America’s renewable energy industry the way China has not. The president has even called clean energy tax credits a “scam,” saying he’d rather spend the money anywhere else. This is industrial-scale foolishness.

正因为如此，马斯克和其他许多人认为，特朗普和他的共和党狂热信徒们的能源政策如此“疯狂和具有破坏性”，特朗普等人拒绝了一项“以尽可能快的速度尽可能清洁地使用所有能源”（包括石油、天然气、煤炭、风能、水力、核能、太阳能、地热、氢）的能源政策，该政策一直在努力淘汰最脏的能源，让最清洁的能源取而代之，就像中国经常做的那样。特朗普反其道而行之，选择去削弱美国的可再生能源产业。总统甚至称清洁能源税收抵免为“骗局”，说他宁愿把钱花在其他地方。这真是蠢到天上去了。

I was struck by a quote from an energy expert in The Wall Street Journal the other day. “The big-picture outlook for energy is we are going to be less competitive because of this law,” said Nick Nigro of Atlas Public Policy. “Ten years from now we could look back on this moment as the time in which the U.S. pulled back and essentially lost the transition to clean energy.”

前几天，《华尔街日报》上一位能源专家的话让我吃了一惊。“能源行业的整体前景是，由于这项法律，我们的竞争力将下降，”阿特拉斯公共政策公司的尼克·尼格罗表示。“十年后，当我们回顾这一时刻时，就会发现美国在向清洁能源转型的过程中后退了，基本上是失败了。”

Alas, truth be told, Democratic Party progressives helped to make Trump and his party this foolish on energy with their own crazy fantasies. Too many of them behaved as if we could go cold turkey from a fossil fuel economy to a clean and green one, without scaling cleaner fuels to bridge the transition, like natural gas and nuclear, and without loosening permitting standards for more transmission lines to get clean power from the middle of the desert to the cities where it is needed.

唉，说实话，特朗普及其政党在能源方面如此愚蠢，也跟民主党进步派自己不着调的空想有关。进步人士中有太多人表现得好像我们可以突然从化石燃料经济转变为清洁和绿色经济，而不需要推广天然气和核能等更清洁的燃料来过渡，也不放松允许更多输电线路的标准，将清洁电力从沙漠中部输送到需要电力的城市。

Few Americans understand how far ahead of us China already is in this realm and moving farther ahead, and faster, every day.

很少有美国人了解，中国在这个领域已经领先我们很多，而且每天都在以更快的速度向前迈进。

Consider this snapshot: In 2000 China produced just over 1,300 terawatt hours of electricity while the U.S. produced nearly 3,800 (a terawatt is equal to a million megawatts). Fast forward to today, China produces over 10,000 terawatt hours while the U.S., since 2000, has added only 500 — an increase of only 13 percent in two and a half decades. Much of China’s electricity growth originally came from expanded coal-fired generation, but in recent years it has been driven by expanding hydro, solar, wind and battery sources, which are easier, cheaper and quicker to build and also help the climate.

看看这个简述：2000年，中国的发电量刚刚超过1300太瓦时，而美国的发电量接近3800太瓦时（1太瓦等于100万兆瓦）。时至今日，中国的发电量超过10000太瓦时，而美国自2000年以来只增加了500太瓦时，在25年里只增加了13%。中国电力的增长最初主要来自燃煤发电的扩张，但近年来则是由水力、太阳能、风能和电池能源的扩大所推动的，这些能源的建设更容易、更便宜、更快捷，还有助于气候保护。

As a recent article from Shanghai in the The Financial Times put it: “China is on its way to becoming the world’s first ‘electrostate,’ with a growing share of its energy coming from electricity and an economy increasingly driven by clean technologies. It offers China a strategic buffer from trade decoupling and rising geopolitical tensions with the U.S.”

正如《金融时报》最近一篇发自上海的文章所言：“中国正在成为世界上第一个‘电力化国家’，电力在能源中所占的比重越来越大，经济越来越多地由清洁技术驱动。它为中国提供了一个战略缓冲，使其免受贸易脱钩和与美国地缘政治紧张局势加剧的影响。”

As for Trump’s goal of making America globally energy dominant during his term of office, his bill just made that impossible. There is no path to energy dominance in the next five years without renewables.

特朗普的目标是在他的任期内让美国在全球能源领域占据主导地位，但他的法案让这一目标不可能实现。如果没有可再生能源，就无法在未来五年占据能源主导地位。

Let’s say you want to generate additional electricity for more data centers just through natural gas today. Even if you have an abundance of gas, as America does, you need more giant turbines to convert the gas to electricity. If you ask the major manufacturers of those turbines — GE Vernova, Siemens Energy and Mitsubishi Power — they will likely tell you that they will be very happy to deliver you one, but you will be lucky to have it installed by 2030. That is how long their backlogs are. And there is no telling what that turbine will cost with all of Trump’s new steel and aluminum tariffs.

假设你今天决定只用天然气来产生额外的电力，驱动更多的数据中心。即使像美国这样拥有丰富的天然气的国家，也需要更多的巨型涡轮机来将天然气转化为电能。如果你问这些涡轮机的主要制造商——通用Vernova、西门子能源和三菱电力——他们很可能会告诉你，他们很乐意为你提供一台涡轮机，但能在2030年之前安装好就算很不错了。他们的订单积压就有这么多。在特朗普新的钢铝关税下，天知道这样的涡轮机成本是多少。

By contrast, you can build and put online a new solar farm with battery storage in Texas in just 18 months.

相比之下，你可以花18个月的时间，在得克萨斯州建造一个新的太阳能发电厂，并将其投入使用。

“During the past quarter, Texas took the lead in clean power installations, adding an impressive 2,596 MW of new utility-scale solar, wind and storage capacity,” reads an October research report from Texas A&M, referring to megawatts of power. “This milestone marks the first time Texas has surpassed California to become the top solar state in the nation.’”

“在过去的一个季度里，得克萨斯州在清洁能源安装方面处于领先，新增公用事业规模的太阳能、风能和储能装机容量达到了了不起的2596兆瓦，”得克萨斯农工大学10月份的一份研究报告写道。“这一里程碑标志着得克萨斯州首次超过加利福尼亚州，成为美国最大的太阳能州。”

A Texas energy expert, Doug Lewin, posted last week that the Texas grid, known as ERCOT, recently reported that the state had added 10,000 megawatts of power in just the last year — most of it from supercheap solar power with battery storage, so energy can be distributed at night when the sun is not shining. As a result, Texas has seen a drop in brownouts on its grid because of more renewables combined with bigger storage batteries. Texas can still deploy solar-plus-batteries in the future, but now the electricity will cost consumers a lot more thanks to the Trump bill.

得克萨斯州能源专家道格·勒温上周发布消息称，该州电网最近报告称，仅去年一年就增加了1万兆瓦的电力——其中大部分来自超廉价的太阳能发电，并配有电池储能装置，这样就可以在夜间阳光不充足时分配能源。因此，由于更多的可再生能源与更大的储能电池相结合，得克萨斯州电网的限电现象有所减少。得州未来仍然可以部署太阳能加电池，但现在，由于特朗普的法案，消费者的用电成本将大大增加。

If that higher monthly electricity bill bothers you, call Energy Secretary Chris Wright. He assuredly knows better, but like every other sycophant in Trump’s cabinet he seems to have just told the boss what he wanted to hear. As Wright must know, solar energy plus storage batteries made up 81 percent of the new electricity capacity added in the U.S. in 2024, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Now Trump’s idiotic bill will slash that amount.

如果每月电费支出增加令你烦恼，请致电能源部长克里斯·赖特。他当然更清楚这些情况，但就像特朗普内阁中的其他阿谀奉承者一样，他似乎只是对老板说了老板想听的话。赖特一定知道，根据美国能源情报署的数据，2024年美国新增电力容量中，太阳能和储能电池占81%。现在特朗普的愚蠢法案将削减这一份额。

The result for Americans? The research firm Energy Innovation, whose peer-reviewed energy modeling is widely respected, projects that Trump’s effort to diminish America’s renewable energy industry will cause wholesale electric power prices to increase roughly 50 percent by 2035, and that cumulative annual consumer energy costs will increase more than $16 billion by 2030. It also projects that some 830,000 renewable energy jobs will be lost or not created by 2030.

美国人会得到什么样的结果呢？研究公司能源创新拥有广受推崇的同行评议能源模型，该公司预测，特朗普削弱美国可再生能源产业的举措，将导致到2035年批发电价上涨约50%，到2030年，消费者每年的累计能源成本将增加逾160亿美元。报告还预测，到2030年将失去或无法创造约83万个可再生能源工作岗位。

For all of these reasons, I am certain there are only two political parties in the world today cheering the passage of this bill: Trump’s Republican Party and the Chinese Communist Party — because nothing is more destined to make China great again than Trump’s “big, beautiful, America surrenders the future of electricity to Beijing” bill.

基于所有这些原因，我确信今天世界上只有两个政党为这项法案的通过欢呼：特朗普的共和党和中国共产党——因为没有什么比特朗普的“把电力未来拱手让给北京的大而美”法案更加注定能让中国再次伟大了。