Donald Trump comes back as US President and heralds a new era for the energy transition, marked by profound trade, geopolitical, and economic risks but also big market opportunities. Trump’s trade wars, China’s clean energy blitz, and the emergence of artificial intelligence are major investment themes to watch in 2025.
Trade wars will disrupt the energy transition
Trump’s aggressive trade agenda will create a disbalance scenario for the energy transition.
Trump’s tariff war would risk re-igniting inflation in the United States, in turn putting upward pressure on interest rates. The situation would threaten to slow global economic growth and further fracture global trade lines. Slower growth, for instance, would be a major headwind for oil and other commodities. China’s dominant role in clean energy supply chains, including solar panels, batteries, and electric vehicles, will continue to be a trade flashpoint with the United States and Europe.
Crude oil prices will be under pressure in 2025
Oil markets have been dominated by surging post-pandemic demand, tackling a big change in supply and geopolitical scenario since 2021. That change started showing signs of strain in 2024 as global oil demand slowed sharply and OPEC+ struggled to exert control over the market. The 2025 will be more challenging for oil market worldwide.
| Export Country | Value USD Billion | Import Country | Value USD Million |
| United Arab Emirates | 570 | United Arab Emirates | 470 |
| Saudi Arabia | 320 | Saudi Arabia | 211 |
| Iraq | 115 | Iraq | 85 |
| Iran | 104 | Iran | 65 |
| Qatar | 97 | Nigeria | 60 |
Trump 2.0 would see growth in the domestic oil and gas industry
Trump will put oil and gas production at the center of US energy policy in his second term, a sharp break from the Biden administration’s focus on clean energy and climate change. The new administration is likely to support the deployment of carbon capture, utilization, and storage as well as hydrogen, including so-called “blue” hydrogen that uses natural gas.
| Year | US Oil Exports | US Natural Gas Exports |
| 2023 | 117 | 34 |
| 2024 | 118 | 32 |
*****Value USD Billion
The race to power AI is shaping the investment landscape
Big tech firms are in an AI arms race and will spend tens of billions of dollars in 2025, and have signaled they will invest hundreds of billions more in the coming years, building new energy-intensive data center capacity to underpin their AI ambitions.
India, China, the European Commission, and over 50 countries signed the statement on “Inclusive and Sustainable Artificial Intelligence (AI) for People and the Planet” at the AI Action Summit in Paris on February 11, 2025.
The race to power those facilities has already shifted the power sector into growth mode and will drive new opportunities for generation and transmission investment and draw new pools of capital into the sector. In the near term, we see this power surge favoring natural gas and renewables.
How will 2025 shape the global energy market? Will the Trump tariff war impact international trade? Keep following Market Inside to monitor global shipments of crude oil, energy products, and other affected commodities and countries grabbing investment opportunities.
