TRUMP ENERGY POLICY – A RECIPE FOR AMERICA LAST
Dr. Common Good
Trump announced on January 7 (as reported by The Hill) that his administration would oppose all wind energy production, saying “we’re going to try to have a policy where no windmills are being built.” His rationale, apparently, is that wind energy requires a subsidy and he pretends not to favor subsidies, though of course he has also opposed wind energy for some time based on entirely unfounded and ridiculous claims about threats to whales, cancer risk, and other purported problems. Meanwhile, fossil fuel actually continues to receive extensive subsidies — increasing by 85% to an all-time high in 2022 according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), and totaling $7 trillion in 2023, as reported by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). So, on that point alone, Trump’s rationale is specious, without merit and baseless.
But this is just one alternative energy source. He also wants to roll back regulations favoring electric and hybrid vehicles, open or re-open land for drilling, and again stay away from global climate change agreements. His repeated “drill baby drill” mantra speaks for itself. So here we are in 2025, and Trump’s understanding of the energy landscape remains retrograde, ignorant and foolish. What is it about big gas-guzzling vehicles that he finds so compelling? As yet another symbol of the dominance he craves?
As much as one might want to make some sense of this, there isn’t any. Like almost everything else Trump asserts, it is lunacy, founded on nothing, though in the case of fossil fuel, he may have a myopic sense that there is short-term money to be made.
If Trump, or his MAGA minions, really represented anything like America first, with a goal of advancing American interests above all, the opposite position should actually follow. A smart businessperson would understand this, because any minimal observation of energy trends, markets and needs would clearly indicate that global leadership in the energy sector will come from being at the top of the game with respect to green energy. China knows this. The EU knows this. Even oil-rich countries know it.
But Trump and his sycophantic MAGA-world? They cling to the drill mantra, against all real-world evidence, against any rational foresight. And we have not even touched the environmental and climate-change consequences of fossil fuels in this post, because that is yet one other major real-world phenomenon that Trump and MAGA-world just don’t believe in. Yes, they insist, the world is flat.
So ask yourself, whether you are a Republican, independent, or anything else, even if you are sympathetic to an America first stance, does Trump’s irrational, regressive energy policy put America first? No, it does not. It puts America last.