Trump’s Wind-Farm Halts Threatens Jobs, Support of Blue-Collar Workers
(Bloomberg) -- The White House is touting President Donald Trump’s commitment to US workers in the run-up to Labor Day, and the Interior Department just praised the men and women “fueling America’s offshore energy industry.”
But the administration has halted work on wind farms off the East Coast, disrupting plans at multibillion-dollar projects and risking jobs. That’s why all the praise for labor rings a bit hollow for union leader Patrick Crowley in Rhode Island, where a stop-work order halted construction of a nearly-finished offshore wind farm, sidelining roughly 1,000 workers. Crowley, the president of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO, said his members were stung by the administration’s move against the Revolution Wind project.
“A lot of them voted for Trump, and they didn’t vote to have their jobs cut,” Crowley said. “That’s the level of anger right now.”
As Trump’s long-running derision of wind power escalates into a targeted campaign against the turbines he calls bird-killing eyesores, industry advocates say the president’s moves are running counter to some of his own ambitions. For instance, the work disruptions are ensnaring the blue-collar workers he championed in his 2024 bid for a second term. And putting potential energy sources on the chopping block also threatens Trump’s goal of winning the global competition to dominate power-hungry artificial intelligence technology.
In a statement, White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly said that Trump “has ended Joe Biden’s war on American energy and restored American energy dominance. This means prioritizing the most effective and reliable tools to power our country, which includes following through on his promise to ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ and unleash domestic oil, gas, and nuclear power – supporting thousands of good-paying energy jobs across the country.”
So far, stop-work orders and yanked permits — as well as the threats of them — have disrupted plans for at least four permitted wind farms off the US East Coast this year. Revolution Wind, a project meant to supply 704 megawatts of electricity to Connecticut and Rhode Island, was already roughly 80% built on Aug. 22, when the Interior Department told developer Orsted A/S to halt work on the site.
Project backers are lobbying Trump administration officials to reverse course, warning that the intensifying federal government strikes against offshore wind projects threaten billions of dollars of investment in the US — as well as American jobs and domestic manufacturing far from the coast, in Republican strongholds such as Louisiana.
The Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management cited concerns about “the protection of national security interests” and interference in various uses of coastal waters when ordering the work stoppage at Revolution Wind.
The hits to the offshore wind workforce are especially salient for a president who has “talked a lot about the workers of America” and has enjoyed labor union support, said Hillary Bright, executive director of the not-for-profit industry advocacy group Turn Forward.
At Revolution Wind near Rhode Island, Crowley said that the administration’s order is stoking uncertainty — and backlash — among specially trained workers, though the economic impacts extend to manufacturing in other states.
“These are working-class, blue-collar jobs. These are the jobs the president talked about protecting,” Crowley said. “This isn’t just a Rhode Island project. It’s an American project.”
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