Business
Commentary: Trump’s ‘weird war’ on wind power will jeopardize our energy future and cost Americans billions
Trump is shelling out $2 billion of taxpayer money to kill wind power projects, but his hatred for the technology is based on myths
Picking the wildest fantasy promoted by President Trump as a basis for public policy is increasingly challenging — is it his yarn about schoolchildren being secretly abducted from their classrooms and given sex-changing operations? The notion that the vaccines given to children are like “a vat, like a big glass, of stuff pumped into their bodies?”
Here’s one that has disrupted the economics of renewable energy generation and will cost Americans billions of dollars: It’s Trump’s “completely weird war on wind power in the United States,” based on a sheaf of “fact-free arguments.”
That judgment comes from Steven Cohen, a climate policy expert at Columbia University, who points out that wind already accounts for 10.5% of U.S. energy generation, that it’s destined to continue growing — and that most of it is generated today in red states such as Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa and Kansas.
Fifty years from now, people are going to be amazed that we burned these rare, useful hydrocarbons for fuel, when the sun was just sitting up there providing an essentially infinite source of energy.
— Steven Cohen, Columbia University
There is no question that Trump’s weird war against wind is full blown. On the day of his second inauguration, he issued an executive order shutting down all new permits for offshore wind farms and ordered the Interior Department to review existing permits.
A federal judge in Massachusetts blocked the executive order in December, and his orders suspending work on existing offshore wind projects have been halted by other federal judges. The Trump administration has blocked or delayed as many as 165 wind projects on private land, citing “national security” concerns, according to the American Clean Power Assn.
Most recently, Trump has reached agreements with offshore wind firms in which the government will pay them a combined $2 billion to abandon their U.S. projects.
At some level, this crusade resembles Trump’s misguided effort to revive the American coal industry, which is on the glide path to inevitable extinction. In that case, Trump is waging an explicitly partisan and ideological battle. “We’re ending Joe Biden’s war on beautiful, clean coal,” he declared last April.
Trump’s anti-wind program is part of his campaign to dismantle U.S. renewables policy because of its roots in the Biden administration.
Additionally, multiple commentators conjecture that his hostility to wind originated in 2011, when he groused that an offshore wind farm would be visible from one of his golf courses in Scotland. He sued to thwart the “ugly” project, and lost.
But Trump has mustered other arguments against wind, on- and offshore, none of which holds water.
During a cabinet meeting in July 2025, he called wind “a very expensive form of energy.” In fact, on average it’s cheaper than natural gas, coal and nuclear generation. Perhaps more important, the cost has been coming down sharply as technology improves and the sector reaches critical mass: falling to eight cents from 21 cents per kilowatt-hour from 2010 to 2024 for offshore projects, and to 3.4 cents from 11.3 cents for land-based wind farms over the same period.
Trump blamed wind turbines for mass killing whales and birds. Neither assertion is correct.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a federal agency, says “there are no known links between large whale deaths and ongoing offshore wind activities.”
The Audubon Society reported in January that although wind turbines can present hazards to birds, “developers can effectively manage these risks without significantly increasing project costs.” The biggest risks to birds come from the climate: “Two-thirds of North American birds are at increasing risk of extinction from global temperature rise,” the society reported — a threat that wind power can ameliorate.
Trump spokeswoman Taylor Rogers didn’t respond to my questions about the derivation of his anti-wind stance, but told me by email only that “President Trump has been clear: hard-earned taxpayer dollars shouldn’t be wasted on unreliable and costly wind farms that pose serious threats to our national security. Instead, we should be strengthening and expanding our infrastructure that produces reliable, affordable, and secure energy like natural gas plants.”
That brings us to the recent deals with offshore wind developers. The largest single deal, signed in March, was with the French firm TotalEnergies, which is to receive approximately $1 billion from the federal government to abandon all of its U.S. offshore wind projects and invest instead in oil and gas projects, including a liquefied natural gas export facility in Texas.
In his March 23 announcement of the deal, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum called offshore wind “one of the most expensive, unreliable, environmentally disruptive, and subsidy-dependent schemes ever forced on American ratepayers and taxpayers.”
This is what Huck Finn would call a “stretcher,” given the decades of subsidies spooned out to the oil and gas industry, reaching more than $30 billion a year in federal and state tax credits, indulgent regulation of pollution and low-cost access to federal lands. Indeed, the investment firm Lazard recently reported that renewables, including wind, are a cost-competitive form of generation even without subsidies. (Lazard’s calculation is of the “levelized cost of energy,” meaning the average cost over a generating plant’s lifetime.)
TotalEnergies fell into lockstep with the Interior Department in its own announcement, explaining its willingness to renounce U.S. offshore wind power because “offshore wind developments in the United States, unlike those in Europe, are costly,” echoing the agency’s position that “the development of offshore wind projects is not in the country’s interest.” Never mind that one factor that makes U.S. offshore wind development costly compared with Europe is the Trump administration’s opposition.
The government subsequently reached an agreement to pay the French company Ocean Winds $885 million to walk away from two offshore wind projects, including one in the waters off California. Ocean Winds described the deal as one driven chiefly by economics, but hinted at pressure from the White House.
“We welcome the opportunity to engage constructively with the administration on this agreement and acknowledge the clarity they have provided with this decision and deal,” Michael Brown, the chief executive of Ocean Winds North America, said when the deal was announced last month. “Our priority remains disciplined capital allocation and delivering reliable energy solutions that create long-term value for ratepayers, partners, and shareholders.”
The TotalEnergies deal, which the government has described as a “refund” of money the firm paid for its offshore leades, raised the hackles of congressional Democrats, who assert that it violates the law and constitution in multiple ways.
“We will hold you accountable for this billion-dollar ripoff,” Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee and Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael), ranking member of the House Committee on Natural Resources, warned TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanné in an April 29 letter.
Among other infirmities Raskin and Huffman alleged, the government’s national security rationale for canceling offshore wind leases looks “fabricated”; the payout violates the statutory formula for compensation for canceled leases; the money is to come from a fund designed only to pay court-ordered judgments and settlements of lawsuits, which don’t exist in this case; and includes a provision preventing the deal from being reviewed by a court.
The last of those provisions would have to be authorized by Congress, the letter states, asking for documents and a response from the company by Wednesday. Committee spokespersons weren’t available to say whether they received a response from TotalEnergies, and the company didn’t respond to my request for comment. I received no response from the Department of the Interior.
The California Energy Commission has opened an investigation into the Ocean Winds deal.
“The Trump Administration is recklessly spending billions of taxpayer dollars on backroom deals that would turn back the clock on innovation” CEC Chair David Hochschild said. “Taxpayer dollars should be used to build a sustainable energy future, not to pay to make projects disappear.”
What’s especially wasteful about Trump’s crusade against wind power is that it’s almost certain to be time-limited.
It’s hardly debatable that renewables such as solar and wind will be our principal sources of energy in the future; holding back the clock achieves nothing but injecting uncertainty into investment decisions that need to be made now, at a time when the price of oil is on the upswing thanks to Trump’s Iran adventure and Europe and China are racing to transition away from fossil fuels, while the U.S. remains becalmed by ideology.
“In the long run, fossil fuels will be used for petrochemicals and not for burning,” Cohen told me. “Fifty years from now, people are going to be amazed that we burned these rare, useful hydrocarbons for fuel, when the sun was just sitting up there providing an essentially infinite source of energy.”
California, the epicenter of the artificial intelligence boom, continues to grow its economy faster than the nation, but more people are losing their jobs and the cost of living remains high.
New economic indicators released this week show how the Golden State is grappling with the effects of the Iran war, as well as an AI explosion, which is driving huge investments as well as layoffs.
The state’s unemployment rate reached 5.3% in April, roughly 1 percentage point higher than the nation’s. California’s unemployment rate is expected to peak at 5.6% later this year, according to the UCLA Anderson Forecast released this week.
The state outpaced the nation in economic growth in the fourth quarter of 2025. It probably continued to outgrow the country in the first three months of this year, the report said.
“Income and output will continue to grow faster than the U.S. even as employment growth is tepid,” senior economist Jerry Nickelsburg wrote in the forecast. “Once past the current weakness, expected by the middle of next year, a tech, durable goods manufacturing, and construction resurgence should lead to superior growth in both employment and income in the Golden State once again.”
The state’s growth is being bolstered by many local companies that are attracting and spending hundreds of billions of dollars in the race to build the software and infrastructure needed for AI. However, there are signs that the same race may be leading to fewer jobs in some sectors.
From January to May, U.S. tech employers announced 123,653 job cuts, up 66% from the same period a year earlier, according to a report Thursday by global outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. California had close to 77,000 job cuts across all sectors, double the number of any other state.
Although AI was cited more often than any other reason for cuts, the layoffs haven’t been as bad as the pessimists feared, said Andy Challenger, a labor and workplace expert and chief revenue officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
“AI isn’t yet the jobpocalypse some predicted,” he said in a statement. “Like spreadsheets and email before it, the technology will ultimately make workers more productive.”
California has seen job growth in sectors including healthcare and social services. But entertainment, tech and manufacturing businesses have been cutting back.
UCLA’s outlook paints a mixed picture of California’s future, one filled with uncertainty as the Iran war pushes up fuel prices, inflation rises, government policy changes and tariffs disrupt supply chains.
The state is particularly vulnerable to the effect of the war on Iran because it uses pricey low-emissions gasoline, and California ports accept cargo on ships that require large amounts of more expensive oil, according to the forecast.
California also is more dependent on oil from outside the country than other states.
The Iran war has caused gas prices to jump. Above, prices are at and over $6 a gallon at a station in Los Angeles on June, 2, 2026.
(Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)
It’s still too early to predict the fallout from the war on Iran, but economists expect it to negatively affect employment by the end of this year and into 2027, the quarterly forecast from UCLA said. It projected that national real GDP growth would shrink from around 2.3% this year to 1.8% next year.
The UCLA report did not provide a state GDP forecast, but said early indicators suggest California continues to outperform the country. Last year, the national real GDP growth rate was around 2%, the report said. California’s was closer to 2.5%, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Some are concerned that AI could worsen what’s called a “K-shaped” economy, in which the rich see growth and most other people struggle with stagnating opportunities. In California, it could also lead to an “E-shaped” economy, in which low, medium and high-income people each see slight growth.
That depends on whether AI ends up helping workers or replacing them, economist William Yu said.
“If it’s labor substitution, we are going to see this [as] more of a K-shaped economy. If it’s more of labor augmentation, we’re going to see more of [an] E-shaped economy,” he said at a conference about the report.
Tech companies say they are using AI to do more with fewer people. Yu said a lot of the AI spending is going into building out AI data centers rather than hiring.
Citing data from job search website Indeed, AI appears to be slowing down growth in software, information technology, marketing and media job postings, he said. But demand for civil and electrical engineers remains high. AI might not be affecting those roles, or reindustrialization policies are boosting hiring in those areas.
The Kars4Kids jingle is back on the air in California after being ordered off the airwaves last month.
The catchy jingle that has been getting stuck in heads for nearly three decades was pulled from the air after a California man took Kars4Kids to court for false advertising.
The man said he donated an old car to the charity, believing it would be used to benefit children in need. He was unaware that Kars4Kids gives the donations to another organization, Oorah, that uses the money to fund Jewish youth trips to Israel.
The Orange County court originally ruled the jingle a violation of California’s false advertising law for failing to disclose its religious affiliations, and it was subsequently pulled from the airwaves. Kars4Kids filed an appeal, and the court has ruled the jingle can stay on the air throughout the appeals process.
“Kars4Kids applauds today’s court ruling allowing its ads to continue airing in California while the appeals process continues,” a spokesperson for Kars4Kids said. “The uninterrupted airing of its ads will enable the charity to continue funding its programs for children and families. We believe the lower court’s findings on the facts and the law were deeply flawed, and we look forward to pursuing a broad appeal of that decision.”
Kars4Kids has run into allegations of false advertising before. Oregon and Pennsylvania also took the charity to court over the misleading jingle in 2009, resulting in a $130,000 fine and a requirement to disclose its affiliations in all advertisements.
A Kars4Kids spokesperson said last month that its website clearly states its Jewish affiliation.
“We believe this case was nothing more than a lawyer-driven attempt to siphon off charitable funds for their own gain,” the spokesperson said. “The law and the facts are clearly on our side.”
The nonprofit using the funds gathered by Kars4Kids has also previously used the donations for a matchmaking program for Jewish young adults and to purchase a $16.5 million building in Israel.
While the jingle could be pulled from the air again depending on the result of the appeal, for now, it will remain a part of your morning commute in California.
Texas has dethroned California as the state with the most Fortune 500 companies.
The Fortune 500 list ranks the largest U.S. companies by revenue. This year, 57 of the top companies are headquartered in Texas, compared with California’s 56. It’s a reversal from two years ago when the Golden State had the pole position.
The Lone Star State was quick to claim the victory.
“Texas is the undisputed headquarters of headquarters,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a news release responding to the ranking, which was announced Wednesday. “The world’s leading businesses invest with confidence in Texas because of our welcoming business climate, predictable regulatory environment, and skilled and growing workforce. People and businesses are choosing Texas because Texas works.”
California’s corporate haters say they try to avoid the state’s high costs, income taxes and strict regulations, but the western state is still a top money maker.
“California dominates on nearly every other measure: its Fortune 500 companies are the most profitable ($647 billion), most valuable ($20 trillion), and employ more people than any other state (2.8 million workers),” Fortune said in a news release.
Indeed, despite the naysayers, Californian companies have been leading the world in developing artificial intelligence technology as well as the latest in space and defense tech.
The state is home to nearly 400 “unicorns,” or billion-dollar startups — more than any other state, according to CB Insights. It also gobbled up nearly two-thirds of U.S. venture capital last year, with San Francisco Bay Area startups such as OpenAI leading the way, according to the business information platform Crunchbase.
Texas and California have been in a tug-of-war for the crown. In 2024, after a decade, California bagged the top spot with 57 companies on the list, while Texas and New York tied in second with 52 companies each.
Healthcare giant McKesson, and oil companies Exxon Mobil and Chevron, were the top three Texas companies on the list. Apple, Alphabet, and Nvidia took the top positions in California.
Tesla, which relocated to Austin from Palo Alto in 2021, ranked 43rd on the list. Other major Fortune 500 companies that left California included Oracle, Charles Schwab and Chevron.
California’s population exodus has yet to fully recover from the pandemic times in 2020. The state’s high cost of living and regulatory environment are often cited as reasons for residents opting to move.
More recently, California’s proposal for a one-time tax on billionaires prompted some, including Peter Thiel and Larry Page, to open new offices outside the state.
Some smaller companies are also leaving the state, but nearly the same number are being set up. From 2011 to 2021, the state lost a net 2% of its total of around 47,000 headquarters, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.
“There is some indication of an uptick in headquarters leaving California, but it is really small in comparison to other firm trends,” said Sarah E. Bohn, vice president of the Public Policy Institute of California. “The rate of leaving is slightly higher among bigger firms.”
Bohn, in a recent report, cautioned that focusing solely on relocations overlooks the range of positive and negative forces driving headquarters activity and can misrepresent businesses’ desire and ability to operate headquarters in California and the broader impact on jobs.
Behind Texas and California was New York, home to 53 Fortune 500 companies this year. The fourth spot was tied between Illinois and Ohio, with 29 companies each.
Amazon was the top company on the list, ending Walmart’s 13-year reign at the top of the annual Fortune 500 companies list. Amazon’s 2025 revenue was $716.9 billion, compared with Walmart’s $713.2 billion.
Seattle-headquartered Amazon joined Exxon Mobil, General Motors, and Walmart as the only four companies to have ever held the top position since Fortune began publishing the data in 1955.
Together, the 500 companies on the list roped in $21 trillion in revenue and $2.1 trillion in profits last year, employing 30.5 million people worldwide.
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