As California leaders move to defend liberal state policies from the incoming administration, Democratic leaders in San Diego County are starting to assess the potential impacts of another Trump presidency on everything from climate change to the cross-border sewage crisis to the military.
Like the state, the county relies on the federal government for aid from disasters, among them the growing number of wildfires and the historic floods earlier this year.
Agencies including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — which Donald Trump has said he will gut or overhaul — are key to helping the county respond to issues such as the ongoing cross-border sewage crisis in the Tijuana River Valley.
Trump campaigned heavily on mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, and theres already fear and uncertainty for many migrants waiting to present their cases to U.S. officials — and for nearly 2 million living in California.
And the presidents federal appointments could determine the direction of key developments in the region, well beyond his Cabinet picks. A new U.S. attorney will determine priorities for federal prosecutions, and a possible choice of who leads a binational water agency could play a key role in addressing the sewage crisis.
Though its too early to know exactly what Trump’s presidency will bring locally, some county elected officials are preparing, and fear the implications could be far-reaching.
Supervisor Monica Montgomery Steppe said she and her staff have asked the county’s finance department to prepare a list of programs that wholly depend on federal funding, plus state-funded programs that could be affected. “Were continuing to gather that data, but my concerns are very vast,” she said.
Democrats appear poised to keep control of the county Board of Supervisors, with all incumbents on track for re-election — including Terra Lawson-Remer, who faced the toughest challenge.
In the four years since her election first handed Democrats their majority, the board has shifted away from being fiscally conservative to spending more on new programs and services, funded both locally and by state and federal grants. This year it adopted an $8.53 billion budget, its largest ever.
Lawson-Remer fears some top priorities may be in jeopardy and like her colleague said that her office is beginning to tackle those challenges. She added of Trump, “I expect he could completely blackball states like ours that didn’t support his presidency when it comes to programmatic funding.”
Some major local projects should be relatively secure, among them the bluff stabilization efforts already underway in Del Mar and San Clemente to safeguard San Diegos rail link to Los Angeles. Just this month, Orange County got $100 million in federal grants, the remainder needed for current bluff stabilization projects.
But more such projects are still years away and require more funding. And in the long term, the tracks need to be rerouted off the Del Mar bluffs, a proposal mired in controversy and more than a decade away.
A Surfliner train travels along the collapsing bluffs in Del Mar in 2019. Efforts to shore up the bluffs are now fully funded. (John Gibbins / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Other local projects that have yet to secure funding could also be at risk under a Trump presidency, such as a plan to revamp Mission Bay with the help of federal coastal resiliency grants.
Further complicating matters for some projects, voters appear to have rejected a number of local sales tax and bond measures that would have boosted local revenues, leaving governments more reliant on other sources of funding.
Among the measures that partial election results showed failing were the city of San Diegos Measure E, a one-cent sales tax hike that was expected to bring in $400 million a year, and the countys Measure G, a half-cent countywide sales tax hike that would have funded transportation infrastructure improvements.
Sewage crisis fixes
In recent years, advances have been made in securing federal money to help solve the ongoing cross-border sewage crisis, and in particular to expand an aging, federally operated wastewater treatment plant in the South Bay.
By now, $400 million has been secured toward the $600 million needed for the plant — including $300 million that the previous Trump administration supported appropriating. Local elected officials and the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC), which manages the South Bay plant, will have to lobby the new Congress to secure the remaining $200 million.
Coronados Republican outgoing Mayor Richard Bailey credits the Trump administration with securing the first tranche of funding and expressed optimism going forward.
We were really pleased with their involvement in the past, so I have no doubt that progress will continue and expect to continue to see bipartisan advocacy, Bailey said.
National City Mayor Ron Morrison, an independent, believes Trump commands respect from other countries leaders, which he says could help in tackling the cross-border sewage crisis.
Whether you like him or not, I think this president is going to be more action-oriented, Morrison said. And I think we just need to take advantage of that, if at all possible, on this situation.
But there are still uncertainties.
The fate of Maria-Elena Giner as IBWC commissioner, who President Joe Biden appointed in August 2021, remains unknown. Presidents appoint leaders to the post, and a new president could mean a new appointment.
Many agree that Giner has worked hard to overhaul the historically underfunded federal agency, ultimately removing some obstacles that made addressing the sewage crisis harder.
“Given President-elect Trump’s track record and his promises to weaken important programs, however, I have real concerns about a Trump Administration rolling back this progress,” Rep. Juan Vargas said in a statement.
Meanwhile, San Diego County is relying heavily on the CDC for help investigating how exposure to untreated wastewater and toxic sewer gases affects peoples health. And a petition to consider declaring the river valley a Superfund site for federal cleanup is now before the EPA, whose funding Trump slashed in his first term.
Trump has also said he aims to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act and vowed to rescind any unspent funds allocated by it. That 2022 climate law has already started funding air monitoring improvements in the Tijuana River Valley.
San Diego State University graduate students Ryan Duffy and Shahrin Salam and research specialist Jade Johnson search for a place to collect water samples from the Tijuana River for research into the health and environmental impacts of the sewage crisis on Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024. (Ana Ramirez / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Public health rollbacks
More than half of the county’s $236.8 million public health services budget — and more than a third of its nearly $1.2 billion behavioral health services budget — comes from the federal government, county health officials say.
The county said it will be assessing the potential impacts of the new administration, and that it was too soon for it to comment.
But one of Lawson-Remer’s biggest concerns is a loss of Medicaid funding for behavioral health efforts the county has recently expanded, such as substance use disorder treatment programs.
Trump has also named Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be his health secretary — a powerful Cabinet position that will give him authority over a stable of federal agencies that include the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which annually pumps tens of millions of dollars into San Diego Countys enormous life science and biotech industries.
Kennedy has spread conspiracy theories on various public health issues and has been a leading proponent of the long-debunked claim that vaccines cause autism. Some of the biggest advances made on vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic were made locally at places like UC San Diego and Scripps Research.
Climate-change changes
Trump has repeatedly said he does not believe climate change is a threat, and theres a good chance his administration will stall Californias efforts to tackle the climate crisis. That would include freezing climate change research funding — a field in which San Diego is dominant.
UC San Diegos Scripps Institution of Oceanography produced discoveries that helped lead to the passage of the Paris Accords, the legally binding international climate change agreement passed in late 2015 from which Trump wants the U.S. to withdraw.
His presidency could also reduce the availability of federal grants for equipment the region needs to meet zero-emission mandates, just after the county approved its long-awaited blueprint for reaching net-zero emissions by 2045.
“He is so committed to ‘drill, baby, drill’ — that has been his mantra,” said Nicole Capretz, founder and executive director of the Climate Action Campaign. “Im furious and devastated, and I know it’s just beginning.”
But Jason Anderson, president and CEO of CleanTech San Diego, a business group that promotes renewable energy, is hopeful that state protections will help local industries keep moving forward toward their climate goals.
“Fortunately for us, we live in California,” Anderson said. “California has been really aggressive, and I think we can continue to do so, especially just given the size of the economy. I hope, to some degree, were buffered a little bit.”
Cross-border economy
Trump has repeatedly threatened to levy heavy tariffs on goods from China — and, just as importantly for the San Diego region, from Mexico.
California exported $16.4 billion in goods to China in 2023, including many that were sent overseas by ships operating out of ports in San Diego, Long Beach and Los Angeles. A trade war could slash that figure.
People walking south towards the Mexico pedestrian crossing in San Ysidro on Tuesday, June 25, 2024 in San Diego. (Alejandro Tamayo / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
And coupled with Trumps plans to crack down on immigration, tariffs on goods from Mexico could drastically impact the cross-border economy. Lawson-Remer worries they could impact small businesses reliant on trade with Mexico, which last year surpassed China as the leading source of goods imported by the U.S.
The CaliBaja region — the combined economies of San Diego and Imperial counties and Baja California — is the largest integrated economic zone along the nation’s southern border, with an average of $200 million in goods moving back and forth between California and Mexico every day, according to a University of San Diego report.
Alan Gin, an economist at the University of San Diego, pointed out that proposed tariffs on China could lead manufacturers to choose closer sources — including possibly Mexico, which could benefit the cross-border economy.
But any tariffs imposed on Mexico would offset those positive impacts, Gin cautioned. And an immigration crackdown could slow cross-border commutes, further hurting the economy, he added.
Military might
A trade war could also inflame existing political and military tensions, especially between China and the U.S. China has not only claimed sovereignty over areas of the South China Sea, a key gateway for international shipping, but has also threatened to invade Taiwan.
That could prove a boon for San Diego Countys military economy.
San Diego is the home of the Navys Third Fleet, whose 56 surface warships and four submarines would be called upon to keep those sea lanes open, and perhaps fight China over control of Taiwan. The Third Fleet already patrols that area, partly in an effort to keep China at bay. This naval force includes three of the Navys 11 aircraft carriers.
Even without a trade war, existing political tensions could lead the Trump administration to keep pumping lots of defense money to the West Coast.
Last month, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that the county had the nations largest defense industry workforce in fiscal 2023, with nearly 113,000 people serving as everything from sailors and Marines to civilian ship repair welders and engineers who design next-generation drones, according to a U.S. Defense Department report.
Gin agrees that local private defense companies could benefit from a Trump administration.
But he says the picture could be murkier for San Diegos many blue tech jobs, which use advanced technology to sustainably use the ocean and its resources. Some could potentially benefit from defense spending, while some could be hurt by a drop in climate funding.
Staff writers Phil Diehl, Tammy Murga,Gary Robbins and Paul Sisson contributed to this report.