The U.S. and China are headed in opposite directions on energy. That divergence will be on display when the presidents of the world’s leading gas and renewable producers meet Thursday.
President Donald Trump has doubled down on fossil fuels since returning to the White House, serving as salesman-in-chief as he pressures allies and trade partners into buying more American oil and gas. The approach contrasts sharply with China, which under President Xi Jinping has emerged as a clean energy superpower. China is rapidly expanding its renewable capacity while flooding global markets with solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles.
The two strategies are increasingly in tension, particularly in Asia, where energy consumption is expected to soar as economies expand in the coming years.
“The U.S. and China, moving forward, are trying to sell rival energy export models with the U.S. built around fossil fuels and the Chinese built around cheap renewables,” said Gregory Brew, an energy analyst at the Eurasia Group. “It’s unclear who’s going to come out ahead.”
The already fractious relationship has grown even frostier in Trump’s second term. The president imposed sweeping tariffs on Chinese goods early this year. Beijing retaliated with a ban on critical minerals shipments to the U.S. and stopped buying American soybeans and shiploads of liquefied natural gas. Trump and Xi are expected to meet in South Korea on Thursday on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in what would be their first face-to-face meeting since Trump’s first term.
Energy is a top-tier issue for both countries, as both target Asian market for their exports. Electricity demand in Southeast Asia alone is expected to double by 2050, while Asia more broadly is set to account for about half of global growth in gas demand by the end of the decade, according to the International Energy Agency.
Many countries in the region feel torn between the U.S. and China. Leaders are wary of shifting too aggressively in the direction of one or the other, said Ben Cahill, the lead oil and gas analyst at the University of Texas, Austin’s Center for Energy and Environmental Systems.
The U.S. and China are appealing to consumers for different reasons. American LNG is increasingly cheap, thanks to a wave of new supply expected to come online in the coming years. Chinese-made solar panels are easy to install and limit countries’ exposure to the fluctuations in global gas prices.
“It’s not a binary decision that countries make,” Cahill said. Gas could be especially appealing to countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan and Thailand, all of which have gas infrastructure. But the falling price of solar technologies, coupled with the reliability of batteries, could be increasingly attractive to countries in the future.
Supply surge
Global LNG supply is expected to increase 50 percent by 2030, thanks to a new generation of export terminals that are set to come online in the U.S. and Qatar, according to the International Energy Agency. That’s a recipe for lower gas prices and higher demand. Gas prices are expected to be 40 percent lower globally over the next five years, compared to the previous five, according to IEA, prompting a 9 percent jump in global gas consumption by 2030. Much of that growth is expected to come from Asia.
“The best way to increase gas penetration in Southeast Asia is to make it more abundant and cheaper,” Cahill said. “I think we’re heading in that direction.”
Yet there are limits to LNG’s growth. Even if gas is increasingly a bargain, building the regasification terminals that are needed to import it are expensive. India, the second-largest energy consumer in Asia, has limited LNG import capacity. Trump has pushed India to invest in LNG, but the country has so far resisted, analysts said.
Against that backdrop, Chinese-made solar panels have emerged as a low-cost alternative. Demand in India for Chinese solar cells is up 52 percent over the first half of 2025, helping fuel a boom in solar generation. India is expected to triple its renewable capacity by 2030, with solar accounting for 60 percent of that increase.
Even countries that have LNG infrastructure are adopting solar in greater quantities. Pakistan was rocked by an energy crisis after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent global gas prices skyrocketing. The country had trouble securing LNG cargoes to offset declining production from its domestic gas fields and keep its grid running.
Many Pakistani homeowners responded to surging electricity prices and grid blackouts by installing rooftop solar. The country imported 17 gigawatts of solar panels in 2024, a staggering sum in a nation that has 40 GW of total power generating capacity.
“Pakistan is a perfect example of how this could play out,” said Brew of the Eurasia Group. ”U.S. LNG is competing with solar, it’s competing with wind, it’s competing with nuclear anywhere where power demand is likely to increase. China has cornered the market on solar PV, at the very least.”
China stopped buying U.S. LNG
Trump views energy as bargaining chip within wider trade discussions. A White House official said the president’s aim is to secure more favorable treatment for American exports like LNG in exchange for granting foreign companies access to the U.S. market.
“The Trump administration is committed to rectifying America’s historic trade deficits, trade deficits that have hollowed out critical domestic manufacturing and undermined American workers,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement. “Purchases of American energy, including LNG, would go a long way towards rectifying longstanding trade deficits with the United States that are driven by the unfair trade barriers that other countries have imposed against American exports.”
Trump has gotten more buy-in from agency heads since returning to the White House to identify unfair trade practices and export opportunities, said George David Banks, who led international climate policy during Trump’s first term.
Administration officials like Energy Secretary Chris Wright ultimately think that demand for energy will trump countries’ climate commitments, Banks said.
Nevertheless, he added, “There’s no question that you have a sense in the administration that the international climate, anti-fossil fuel agenda is a liability to the U.S., and it threatens the future of export markets for the United States.”
Analysts say the amount of LNG the U.S. wants to export will likely exceed demand. And many of the recent commitments countries have made to purchase LNG as part of trade deals lack details. In Europe, they don’t align with market realities.
LNG demand in Asia would need to roughly double over the next seven years to meet the amount of gas capacity that has been contracted or is under construction, said Anne-Sophie Corbeau, an expert on natural gas and hydrogen at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.
“Japan, Korea and China won’t double,” she said in an email, noting that Japan and Korea are mature markets with declining populations. China, she added, is trying to reduce its dependence on LNG imports — particularly from the U.S. — as it ramps up electrification using coal and renewables, two resources it has in abundance.
Trump’s Asia tour has exposed the promise, and limits, of Trump’s LNG push. He arrived in Tokyo with hopes of formalizing Japan’s commitment to invest $550 billion in the U.S. — including a $44 billion LNG export terminal in Alaska. He left with promises to continue negotiating on funding for an LNG terminal in Alaska, but no firm deal. That project’s economics are challenging because it would require building an 800-mile pipeline, analysts said.
Japan is broadly supportive of America’s LNG growth, Cahill said. Japanese firms have contracted for large amounts of U.S. LNG in recent years, prizing the security of supply and flexibility offered by U.S. shippers. If Japanese buyers can fetch a higher price for the LNG they have contracted to buy, they can ship it to other countries.
But there are limits to how far Japan is willing to go. The country has gradually restarted its nuclear reactors in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in 2011, prompting LNG imports to fall.
China presents another dilemma. It has stopped buying U.S. LNG cargoes in retaliation for tariffs Trump placed on Chinese goods earlier this year. Whether Trump can secure a deal that would allow a resumption of U.S. shipments to the world’s largest gas consumer is one of the big questions heading into his talks with Xi.
“The U.S. wants to dominate the fossil fuel world, and they will definitely dominate the LNG world. But whether China wants to remain dependent on LNG, and in particular U.S. LNG, remains questionable,” said Corbeau.
“Unless Trump reverses what’s happening with China,” she added, “he is going to find that the LNG market is a bit smaller than before.”
This story also appears in Energywire.
