Can Wind Power Survive Trump’s Efforts Against It?

US President Donald Trump has aggressively sought to thwart the wind power industry. Within hours of returning to the White House in 2025, Trump issued a directive that froze new permitting for wind energy and ordered officials to consider terminating existing leases. In December, his administration ordered a pause to five East Coast projects under construction due to unspecified national security concerns.

But his efforts — which cast a pall over the wind industry, triggering project delays and some cancellations — have run into legal problems. Late last year, a US judge ruled the permitting freeze illegal. Then, in the span of a few weeks, judges blocked the Trump administration from enforcing stop-work orders on five separate offshore wind projects, allowing construction to resume.