Trump’s Tariffs Could Threaten His ‘Energy Dominance’ Agenda
April 3, 2025
A new wave of tariffs could raise costs for energy producers, including oil and gas companies, as well as solar and wind firms.
President Trump has promised to usher in an era of “energy dominance” and cut energy costs in half for consumers in his first 18 months in office. But his latest round of tariffs, announced Wednesday, have rattled energy markets and threatened to scramble global supply chains.
The upshot: neither fossil fuel companies nor renewable energy companies are thrilled about the announcement. Higher costs for U.S. energy producers, including more expensive materials, could throw cold water on the “drill, baby, drill” philosophy Trump has championed. And the effect of the new levies could stymie efforts to expand renewables domestically.
“It’s always tempting to say these tariffs are good for fossil fuels, bad for clean energy,” Antoine Vagneur-Jones, a researcher for BloombergNEF, told Brad Plumer. “But I think it’s just bad for everyone.”
Trump’s latest tariffs
President Trump announced a series of new tariffs on Wednesday that were far higher than many economists had expected, and U.S. stocks plunged significantly on Thursday. The changes, as Patricia Cohen wrote, cut directly against the “global economic system that the United States has shaped and steered for more than three-quarters of a century. “
Trump announced a 10 percent tariff on all imports to the U.S., with higher rates for certain nations. Imports from the European Union, a key trading partner and importer of U.S. energy, will face a new 20 percent tariff, and Chinese goods will be subjected to a new 34 percent tariff on top of existing charges.
It’s possible these numbers will change. In the first months of his term, Trump delayed some tariffs and reduced rates following negotiations with trading partners.
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