According to Xinhua News Agency, in the “Big and Beautiful” tax and spending bill, President Donald Trump has canceled the clean energy tax credits and plans to impose new taxes on wind and solar projects.
As a long-standing critic of green energy, Trump often makes wild claims in public, such as “wind power is not useful at all,” “wind power destroys our fields and valleys, kills all birds,” etc. On July 27th local time, Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen held a press conference together, announcing a trade agreement that was “both sides satisfied but lacked too many details, had disagreements, and had numerous uncertainties.” Trump, who believed he had made significant progress in reaching the agreement, couldn’t help but vent his frustrations towards von der Leyen during the press conference.
“I also told Europe another thing: we will not allow wind turbines to be built in America because they are killing us,” Trump said to Von der Leyen sitting next to him, “They are strangling our beautiful landscapes, our valleys, our beautiful plains—not airplanes, but beautiful plains.”
Trump added, “In America’s beautiful areas, you look up and see everywhere with wind turbines. It’s a terrible thing.”
Von der Leyen sat silently listening, giving Trump the perfect opportunity to promote his bizarre statements. He mixed truth with fiction, saying, “This is the most expensive energy. They are almost all made in China. When they start rusting and rotting within eight years, you can’t really shut them down or burn them. They don’t let you cover the propellers or blades because there’s some type of fiber that doesn’t match the soil,” “It will harm our soil,” “The whole thing is a scam.”
On July 27th local time, Trump “mentioned” Von der Leyen to Europe not to build wind turbines.
In fact, although the blades of wind turbines indeed require recycling, their overall lifespan is about 30 years, and 90% of wind turbines are recyclable.
“Big Smart” Trump also used Germany as an example, teaching that “Germany tried it but it didn’t work. Wind energy requires subsidies; energy shouldn’t need subsidies. With energy, you can make money, you won’t lose money.”
“More importantly,” Trump stated, “wind turbine noise is ‘killing’ whales. In a short period in one area of Massachusetts, 18 whales were washed ashore due to the noise, which drove them insane.”
However, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has indicated that there is currently no scientific evidence linking the deaths of whales to offshore wind farms.
As he spoke, Trump began complaining about the Scottish Tenbere golf course where he had just played, claiming that the wind turbines on the course obstructed the view for playing, “Isn’t this shameful? It’s too sad,” “You see these everywhere in Europe.”
“The promoters of these wind turbines are not environmentalists, they are political hacks,” Trump suggested to Europe, “Stop the wind turbines, you are destroying your country. I am serious, it’s too tragic.”
What’s more tragic seems to be that some people seem to be beginning to believe Trump’s nonsense. A netizen asked in the comment section below the video, “Can you tell me about wind turbines? Why is Trump so against them? He made some statements during his meeting with EU leaders today, are those true?”
However, there are also clear-headed netizens pointing out, “Trump lies,” “This is a mixture of exaggeration, inaccuracy, and misinformation.”
Throughout his career, Trump has been skeptical about renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power.
Last year during the campaign, he complained to his supporters, “The ugly wind turbines are ruining your community.”
On his first day back in the White House, Trump signed an executive order suspending all federal wind energy permitting processes. On July 7th, as part of the “Big and Beautiful” tax and spending bill, Trump signed another executive order to end federal subsidies for renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power, citing concerns about their reliability and high costs.
These actions have faced severe criticism from the American wind energy industry. Jason Grumet, CEO of the American Clean Energy Association, stated, “Wind power is a fundamental element of our ability to meet the surge in electricity demand from manufacturing and data centers, which are critical to national security.”
Data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) shows that wind energy is the largest source of renewable energy in the country, supplying one-tenth of the nation’s electricity.
Robbie Orvis, Senior Director of Modeling and Analysis at the American think tank Energy Innovation, pointed out that the U.S. clean energy projects had previously struggled due to slow investment growth. Now, with Trump’s “Big and Beautiful” tax and spending bill, the situation will only worsen. Thousands of billions of dollars in investments could be lost in an instant, and the long-term competitiveness of the U.S. manufacturing sector could be severely impacted, “This is just terrible.”