President Trump has turned his vendetta against wind power—which began more than a decade ago, after he lost a battle to block the construction of turbines near one of his Scottish golf courses—into an all-out war. And it’s not just our climate that will suffer. Consumers and workers alike will be punished, too. In fact, they already are.
Trump said last week that his administration would not approve any wind or solar projects, calling renewables “THE SCAM OF THE CENTURY!” And sure enough, on Friday, the Trump administration announced in a court filing that it will withdraw its approval of a wind farm that was set to begin construction off the coast of Maryland next year. The same day, the Department of the Interior ordered Ørsted, a Danish company, to stop work on a nearly completed wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island, citing, without evidence, that it was a “security risk.”
It’s unsurprising to see Trump, for reasons both petty and corrupt, destroying an industry that offers humanity a potential off-ramp from the climate crisis. But Trump’s war on wind doesn’t just represent the death drive and climate denial of his party; it also reflects his transactional view of business interests and eagerness to sell out the rest of us.
The oil and gas industry spent around $24 million on the winning campaigns of House and Senate candidates last year, with the overwhelming majority of that largesse going to Republicans. It also spent $2 million on Trump himself, but that hardly satisfied him: In April of last year, fossil fuel industry executives met with him at Mar-a-Lago with a long list of demands, and he asked them for a billion dollars in return. They didn’t oblige him, but Trump is still giving them what they want. The problem is, this is colliding with one of his most compelling campaign promises: to improve life for working-class Americans.
Trump’s vow to “Make America Great Again” was supposed to refer to revitalizing domestic industry and jobs. But according to an analysis released on Tuesday, Trump’s war on renewables has scared off some $20.5 billion in investment from the United States, while wind and solar investment is at a record high in the rest of the world. If Trump gets away with stopping the Revolution Wind project off Rhode Island, thousands of union jobs will be lost, in what the president of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO denounced as “a betrayal of the working class.” The president of the Rhode Island Building Trades Council, which represents many of the workers who have been building Revolution Wind, told CNN that “a lot of our members … voted for this administration and this isn’t what they voted for.” They didn’t vote to join “the unemployment line,” he said, calling the administration’s action “one of the most asinine moves I’ve ever seen in my career.” Since Trump’s election, tens of thousands renewable energy jobs have been lost.
Remember how Trump campaigned against “Bidenflation”? With good reason, Americans were tired of paying high prices for everything, including their energy bills. Now, his tariffs and attack on renewables are contributing to rising energy costs. From January to May 2025, the average price of household energy increased ten percent, according to a July report by Climate Power that analyzed data from the federal Energy Information Administration. (Some places were hit much harder: New Jersey saw a 20 percent increase as of June.) And that was before the bloodletting of the past week; Revolution Wind was set to begin supplying power for 350,000 homes next year, while the Maryland project was expected to power some 718,000 homes.
During his campaign, and early in his presidency, Trump nattered on about supposed government waste and fraud. That was his stated reason for empowering Elon Musk to oversee the new Department of Government Efficiency, which proved as misguided and destructive as you’d expect from the world’s richest, most overrated man. Everyone agrees that the government shouldn’t be wasteful or squander taxpayers’ hard-earned money, but by taking a wrecking ball to the renewable energy industry, Trump is in many cases creating more government waste and squandering more tax dollars. In canceling the wind farms off Maryland and Rhode Island (in the case of Revolution Wind, a project that was nearly 80 percent complete), Trump is wasting millions in state and federal monies that have already been spent.
Trump is doubling down. “We’re not allowing any windmills to go up. They’re ruining our country,” he said Tuesday. He continued spouting lies about wind turbines’ impact on the environment and property values (the climate crisis, of course, imperils both far more). With his batty crusade against wind, Trump reveals his deep lack of interest in the wellbeing of the American working class, whether as workers, consumers, or taxpayers. And in his indifference to the billions already invested by private companies in these projects, he’s signaling to energy companies worldwide that the U.S. is the last place they should try to build anything. It’s a surefire recipe for American weakness.
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