Trump commits $700M to prop up coal industry

Supporters of President Donald Trump and coal during 2020 campaign

(Image credit: Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images)

What happened

President Donald Trump on Thursday said his administration was pouring more than $700 million into reviving the struggling coal industry. The funds will reopen one coal-fired power plant, extend the life of 13 others, subsidize coal mining and export operations and build the first two new coal-burning plants since 2013. Trump said he was invoking the 1950 Defense Production Act to intercede in the market. The money for the new coal-fired plants had been allocated by Congress for clean energy technologies.

This is the “latest in a series of extraordinary efforts” Trump has taken to “improve the fortunes of coal, the most polluting of the fossil fuels and a favored industry” in his White House, The New York Times said. Energy experts “quickly attacked the subsidies as irrational” since “burning coal is one of the least economic methods of producing power,” The Washington Post said. The half-dozen coal plants Trump has kept open through emergency orders have cost “ratepayers tens of millions of dollars.” He has concurrently “clamped down on renewable energy,” said The Associated Press, blocking wind and solar projects and “ending clean energy tax credits.”

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.