Since taking office, President Trump has railed against wind power and the turbines that are needed to generate that energy. He has called the turbines ugly and inefficient, and criticized them for ruining landscapes as well as endangering whales and birds.
So it was curious when, on Thursday, the administration announced a trade investigation that could result in tariffs on imported wind turbines. The Trump administration has typically imposed tariffs to protect American companies against foreign competition and spur domestic production of critical products.
This time, laying out a path to impose tariffs could be an attempt to stymie an industry.
A federal filing released on Thursday showed that the Trump administration had initiated an investigation into foreign wind turbines on Aug. 13. Mr. Trump began the inquiry under a legal provision known as Section 232, which allows the president to apply tariffs to foreign products if their imports threaten national security. Mr. Trump has already used the provision to apply steep tariffs to cars, steel, aluminum and copper, and is threatening further such tariffs on semiconductors, pharmaceuticals and airplanes.
Analysts at Capstone, a strategic consulting firm, said the investigation into wind turbines and their components would raise the price of imported materials that wind projects depend on. They said they believed the investigation was “an attempt to further hamper wind build-out.”
The analysts said that tariffs would be especially painful for developers of offshore wind projects like those underway in New York, since they tend to rely more heavily on imports. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Trump has frequently criticized wind turbines, despite the fact that they are a major source of energy in Republican-led states like Iowa, Oklahoma and Texas. The administration has pushed for the use of oil and gas rather than cleaner sources of energy, and recently released a slew of measures aimed at slowing both wind and solar installations.
In a social media post on Wednesday, Mr. Trump called wind and solar power “THE SCAM OF THE CENTURY.”
“We will not approve wind or farmer destroying Solar. The days of stupidity are over in the USA!!!” the president wrote.
By raising the cost of imported wind turbines, tariffs would make wind energy relatively more expensive compared with other types of energy. The United States imported wind components worth $2.83 billion last year, mostly from the European Union, Mexico and India, Capstone said.
Wind and solar power provided 16 percent of the nation’s electricity last year and are some of the fastest-growing sources of power.
Ana Swanson covers trade and international economics for The Times and is based in Washington. She has been a journalist for more than a decade.
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