Depending on how President Donald Trump is feeling at the moment, he will tell you either that the U.S. is about to embark on a “golden age” in which Americans will prosper beyond our wildest dreams, or that we’re already there. Speaking at the “Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit” in Pittsburgh on Tuesday, Trump chose the latter fantasy. “One year ago you had a dead country, we were dead. We didn’t think you could ever come back,” he said. “And now today you have the hottest country anywhere in the world.”
But if anything is heating up in the U.S. other than the temperature, it’s inflation. The consumer price index rose 0.3% last month, with the annual rate of inflation jumping to 2.7%. Trump’s tariffs are beginning to show up in consumer prices, with more increases to come as companies’ pre-tariff stockpiles run out. Meanwhile, Trump continues to threaten tariffs on whatever and whoever happens to anger him that day. Remember the “90 deals in 90 days” he promised? Not so much. Instead, we’re looking at three and a half more years of tariff chaos, increasing economic instability and raising prices.
Wind power does work just fine, as many of Trump’s red-state allies could tell him.
But with no attendees at the event in Pittsburgh willing to bring up the economic warning signs, Trump’s rambling stream of consciousness came repeatedly back to a question: If tech companies are going to build all these sprawling data centers, some of which will demand as much power as a large city, where will that power come from?
It’s an important query: More large computing facilities means more demand for power, which means higher prices for consumers unless the U.S. generates more energy. Trump often frames this issue in terms of competition with China, which isn’t wrong. Unfortunately, the president’s answer — “more fossil fuels” — means that the U.S. will almost certainly lose that competition and Americans’ energy bills will increase still further.
In Trump’s telling, China powers its economy with glorious coal, while building wind and solar energy equipment to sell to other countries; those countries then destroy themselves by using renewable energy. But if we just double down on fossil fuels, we can triumph. “I saw a board outside and it showed how much electricity China is making,” he told the audience. “Well, we just started, but we’re going to actually end up doing more than them and it’s going to be done privately and you’re going to own your own electric plants and they’ll be powered by maybe nuclear, maybe gas, maybe coal. You know, we brought coal back in. They won’t be powered by wind because it doesn’t work.”
Wind does work just fine, as many of Trump’s red-state allies could tell him; the four states that generate the most power from wind are Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa and Kansas. Yet Trump is convinced not only that wind power is an abomination, but that China doesn’t use any. “They build the windmills, sell them into our country, sell them all over the world and they ruin their fields and ruin their valleys. And then you look at China, where’s your wind farm?” he asked. “No, the whole thing is crazy. But they use coal and they’re building right now about 52 power plants, all of coal.”
China does use lots of coal power, which is one reason it has overtaken the U.S. as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. But it has also made massive investments in renewable energy — $625 billion in 2024 alone. Contrary to Trump’s belief that China has no windmills, China generates more wind power than any other country on Earth. Its investment in solar power is even more impressive; by the end of 2024 it had installed five times as much solar capacity as the United States, and three-quarters of all the solar projects under construction in the world are in China. This May, the country added a gigawatt of solar power (enough for a midsize American city) every eight hours.
China dominates the solar panel industry, and it is far ahead of the U.S. in the production of batteries and electric vehicles.
Yes, as Trump said, they make wind power equipment and sell it to other countries. But Trump’s scorn for this fact is bizarre. Why wouldn’t any country want to supply the world with the machines it needs for the energy sources of the future? Doesn’t he want to promote American manufacturing? China dominates the solar panel industry, and it is far ahead of the U.S. in the production of batteries and electric vehicles. In short, as MIT Technology Review recently reported, “China is the dominant force in next-generation energy technologies today.”
The last administration tried to do something about that; Joe Biden signed legislation that included a long list of programs, loans and incentives to promote industrial revitalization through green technology. The reconciliation bill recently passed by Republicans and signed by Trump will attempt to undo that, by rolling back subsidies, shutting down worthwhile programs, and clawing back money targeted for renewables. As a result, Americans will face higher energy bills. We’ll also get lower economic growth as we turn away from dynamic industries, less international competitiveness as China supplies the world with the equipment it needs, and more pollution (including carbon emissions) as we burn more fossil fuels. The political reality is that many of those effects won’t be visible to the public. At the very least, the connections to Trump’s policies will be hard to discern. Most voters will never know the economic opportunities lost, or grasp how Trump’s promotion of coal and oil are worsening natural disasters. The price increases produced by his deranged tariff policies are much more likely to hit home in the short run. But in the long run, Trump’s backward ideas will profoundly damage our country, our economy and our environment. China’s leaders may not be happy about his tariffs, but they couldn’t be more pleased with the way he’s turning America away from the energy of the future. A bunch of data centers in Pennsylvania won’t change that.
Paul Waldman is a journalist and author focused on politics and culture. 
