Experts warn of looming threat to US infrastructure projects: 'Could have severe consequences'

As Congress works to pass President Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" for his new budget, analysis shows the profound negative impact the proposed repeal of portions of the Inflation Reduction Act could have on the national economy.

According to Axios, the IRA is currently helping to spur $185 billion in new infrastructure projects across the U.S. Repealing components of the bill would likely kill a number of those projects, as they would become significantly more expensive for the companies involved, making them a less worthwhile endeavor.

The point of the IRA was to juice the economy and promote green energy and electricity, transitioning away from coal, oil, and natural gas as fuel sources.

It included tax credits for things as simple as induction stovetops in homes or solar panels on houses, and it extended as far as providing incentives for companies to build wind and solar infrastructure or plants to manufacture EVs and their parts in the U.S.

Making the move even more confusing, as many Republican lawmakers work to repeal the bill, the vast majority of the money tracked by Atlas is being spent in Republican-led districts. Nine of the top 10 IRA-funded districts have Republican representatives, all of whom voted in the House to pass the bill on to the Senate.

Toyota's battery plant in North Carolina, for example, which will provide manufacturing jobs and boost the economy even beyond the investment, could find itself on the chopping block, as would any number of large-scale solar and wind investment opportunities. It would also ban credits for anything with a link to China, a major supplier of parts to the U.S., which would make pushing forward on many of these projects virtually impossible.

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"Elimination of the tax credit or reforms that make it inaccessible could have severe consequences for American manufacturing, weakening investor confidence, and potentially allowing China and Europe to dominate the future of clean energy production," the report argues.

Utah's John Curtis was also among the GOP senators who have said a complete undoing of the IRA could do more harm than good. "We must be wise — we simply cannot afford to treat good policy ideas as guilty by political association. That would be a quest for political power over intelligence and strategy," he wrote in an op-ed for the Deseret News.

"The simple truth is this: many of these credits are Republican policies that we fought to protect. They support strategic energy assets and a robust domestic economy."

However, the IRA's fate is not set in stone. You can contact your senators and representatives and advocate for them to hold the line on green energy initiatives and keep the IRA intact.

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