What critics don’t understand about Trump’s energy policies

A recent New York Times article made some alarming claims: China is racing ahead in clean energy, while America under Trump clings to fossil fuels. Beijing is supposedly building wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicles for a decarbonized world, while Washington is instead doubling down on obsolete oil, gas and coal. The contrast is stark and seemingly damning — the U.S., the article suggests, is losing the future.

But this story is misleading.

What the article misses is the deeper logic shaping the Trump administration’s energy policy. It has little to do with nostalgia or climate skepticism, and everything to do with the demands of artificial intelligence.

Trump’s energy agenda is being guided by a different kind of technological revolution. Massive AI models, sprawling data centers and next-generation chip foundries demand vast, uninterrupted flows of energy. However clean or cheap they may be, wind and solar, by their intermittent nature, cannot deliver the stable, high-density power these systems require.

That distinction, between intermittent and dispatchable energy, is the real dividing line in global energy strategy today. And it’s why Trump’s policy may be more forward-looking than critics realize.

If you want to understand the real rationale, look to Secretary of Energy Chris Wright. In a recent interview, he stated, “To achieve Nvidia’s and America’s dream to win the AI race, we’ve got to produce a lot more electricity.”

Wright’s position is blunt but accurate. Natural gas, followed by nuclear and coal, is what now powers most of America’s electricity, and it is these sources that will fuel the AI boom. “Expanded natural gas electricity production … that’ll be the workhorse of winning the AI race,” Wright explained.

Thus, in Wright’s view, the Trump administration policy isn’t to reject the future but rather to win it by unleashing American energy production to support the backbone of tomorrow’s economy: AI chips, training clusters and data centers.

Contrast that with the Biden administration’s approach. The Inflation Reduction Act was a landmark in climate legislation, pouring hundreds of billions into renewables, clean tech and place-based development incentives. It was designed to build solar farms, wind capacity and green manufacturing hubs, especially in disadvantaged communities.

But for all its strengths, the law was designed in a pre-ChatGPT world. A 2023 Treasury Department fact sheet on the law goes on at length about electric heat pumps, rooftop solar and tax credits for underserved areas. It says nothing about AI, chip fabrication or crypto foundries. The Biden plan focused on equity and emissions, while Trump’s plan focuses on watts and AI’s electricity demands.

That contrast became even sharper with Trump’s second-term executive orders. Within days of taking office, Trump moved to dismantle the regulatory infrastructure supporting Biden’s climate agenda. He ordered agencies to fast-track fossil fuel development and streamline the permitting of pipelines and power stations. Biden-era climate councils and carbon accounting models were scrapped. Electric vehicle mandates were rolled back.

Furthermore, Trump’s executive orders on nuclear power called for 300 new gigawatts of nuclear capacity by 2050. Advanced reactors are to be deployed at AI data centers and military bases within two years. Uranium enrichment, the revival of shuttered nuclear plants and fuel recycling are all being ramped up under the banner of national security.

From liquefied natural gas exports to uranium enrichment, the Trump message is consistent: deregulate, drill, and build. Trump’s coalition is not anti-technology — in fact, it is aggressively trying to corner the energy inputs required for technological supremacy, even if it means tearing up climate policy to get there.

That brings us back to the New York Times’s climate article’s core claims. The piece frames the global energy race as a contest between a clean-energy China and a fossil-fueled America, casting the U.S. as the laggard. But that reading confuses the form of energy with its function. The future won’t be won by whoever builds the most solar panels. It will be won by the country best positioned to power the technologies that drive tomorrow’s economy.

And right now, that technology is artificial intelligence. AI isn’t just another app layer. It’s a foundational shift in computing, manufacturing, defense and global finance. It demands enormous, stable, always-on energy loads. That means natural gas, nuclear and dispatchable capacity, not just wind and sun.

By this logic, it may be China — not the U.S. — that’s making the bigger strategic misstep. Beijing is doubling down on renewables, but those technologies weren’t built to power the AI revolution. Meanwhile, Washington, under Trump, is retooling its energy policy to meet precisely that demand.

Guy Laron is a senior lecturer at the international relations department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.