Analysis: If Trump is elected Nov. 5 what would it mean for Alaska?

If Donald Trump were elected President Nov. 5, what would it mean for Alaska?

Alaskans would be affected like other Americans by a President Trump’s renewed trade war with China. President Biden maintained his predecessor’s China tariff increases while in office and even added some, but Trump is now promising new tariffs on Chinese imports up to 60 percent.

That will spur domestic manufacturing and jobs, he hopes, but it might also raise U.S. consumers’ prices, although importers will likely switch purchases to other low-cost nations like India and Vietnam.

Alaska’s natural resource industries will see a new Trump administration in a favorable light, mostly. Trump is pro-oil and pro-mining, and if his first administration’s track record is any indication it bodes well for new North Slope oil development and mining in places like the Ambler Mining District in northwest Alaska.

Minerals exploration at Ambler is now stalled by the Biden administration’s cancellation of permits for a 211-mile access road to the area from the Dalton Highway to the east.

On the controversial Pebble minerals project the outlook is more uncertain under Trump. There’s little doubt he would sweep away an order by the current U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to foreclose large-scale mining in the Bristol Bay region where Pebble is located.

However, even before the action by the EPA under the Biden administration the key federal permit for Pebble was denied by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers under then-president Trump. At the time there were reports that an influential advisor to the former president had a strong interest in sports fishing and was influenced by sports fish groups opposing Pebble.

If Trump is elected in November, and assuming the termination of the EPA closure to mining, it is likely that Pebble Partnership, Ltd., Pebble’s owners, will resume work to get its permits approved.

What the corps rejected, under Trump, was the company’s application for a Section 404 permit under the federal Clean Water Act. This was done on the basis that Pebble’s proposed environmental reclamation plan was inadequate.

However, at the time Pebble Partnership complained that the denial was done improperly by the Alaska Corps of Engineers district. That there might be some basis to this comes from a subsequent request by senior Corps of Engineers officials, above the Alaska officials, to review the denial based on deficiencies in the process. That review was never done mainly because by then the EPA order to close mining in the region was in effect, and the Alaska Corps felt it meaningless to review the permit denial.

Under a new president Trump, and assuming the EPA’s regional ban is gone, the Alaska Corps district will likely be asked again to review their decision. But based on the previous Trump administration’s leaning there is no certainty that Pebble’s renewed permit application will be received favorably.

On other matters, don’t count on a Trump win to quickly reverse restrictive new Biden administration land management rules in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. That’s because once federal regulations are set in place, such as the new rules for the NPR-A, it can take time to change them. Extensive public procedures must be followed under a federal rules change and lawsuits will inevitably follow.

An example the “roadless” rule in the Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska, which was put in place decades ago by the Clinton administration and survived attempts to reverse it during eight years of the George W. Bush administration. Now, decades later, the Tongass roadless rule is still in there.

Some federal actions can be reversed more easily by a new president. For example, the federal land management plan for the NPR-A, which is a land plan and different than regulations, can be changed more easily, although even this takes time.

In his previous turn as president Trump’s Interior Department began a revision of the management plan put in place by Sally Jewell, president Barack Obama’s Interior Secretary. After four years the revised plan was set to go but was not actually enacted before the wheel turned again and Joe Biden took office.

All through the Trump years and even now former Secretary Jewell’s land plan for the petroleum reserve remains in effect. One major concern over the new NPR-A regulations is a provision that allows designated “protected areas” to be changed, and expanded, every five years. ConocoPhillips warns that the new regulations could impede its ability to explore leases in NPR-A west of its new Willow project.

Meanwhile, exploration in the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, is another hot-button question where Alaskans will look to a new president Trump, if elected, for help. Current president Biden adamantly opposes exploration of ANWR’s coastal plain.

In his previous term as president Trump took an opposite position and needed congressional legislation for the exploration was passed on his watch. Trump’s 2017 tax cut and jobs act, which was passed by Congress, took effect in 2019 before the former president left office.

Alaska’s congressional delegation, led by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, were successful in securing language to the jobs and tax cuts law not only authorize but require two federal lease sales in the coastal plain. One sale was held and leases were sold mainly to an Alaska state development agency, the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, or AIDEA.

However, the new Biden administration blocked permits for exploration of the leases held by AIDEA and then cancelled them arguing that the Trump Interior department did an inadequate environmental review.

The second lease sale required under the federal law will happen later this year, but a new federal Environmental Impact Statement now being developed, still under Biden, may impose very restrictive stipulations on leases. AIDEA is meanwhile in court over the cancellation of its leases in the first lease sale.

A new Trump adminiistration, if there is one, will undoubtably be more friendly to ANWR exploration. But it would take time to undo the procedural web of cancellation of the leases from the first sale and any overly-restrictive lease stipulations in the coming second lease sale.