> The unfortunate message to investors is clear: the U.S. is no longer a reliable place for long-term energy investments.
Absolutely this, there’s no longer any confidence to begin a project anymore. Would like to see the legal action go ahead against the government and set a standard that contracts can’t be treated just as “suggestions”.
The US getting 10% of Intel without any payment is very bad. Was there no shareholder vote?
If I was pharma I would think twice before investing In a factory that can be taken by the state just like that.
EDIT: I was not aware that something was paid. Every time I saw trump on TV he said he got it for nothing. Yeah I know he lies a lot and I should have checked more into it. This is dangerous however as internationally you don't always get the details right away and generally one believes what a head of state says.
> Under the agreement, the U.S. will purchase a 9.9% stake in Intel for $8.9 billion, or $20.47 per share, which represents a discount of about $4 from Intel's closing share price of $24.80 on Friday.
So they bought a 9.9% stake at a slight discount. (And just have to go back a couple of weeks to find Intel's stock price at under $20.47 per share, so I'm not sure you can really call it a real "discount").
Under Biden there was money to be granted (as in: via a grant, Congressionally approved) to Intel. Trump then held the grant hostage in return for government ownership of Intel shares.
There's also a threat that this deali supposedly eases around the Intel CEO that Trump said was 'too connected' to China.
It's either borderline or blatantly illegal, but there are likely no parties eligible to contest, or interested in contesting, it in court.
(Based on my memory of someone's breakdown of a few examples like this - there's a chance I'm conflating a couple of different but related things, the deal with Nvidia to allow selling of some more advanced chips to China being another)
The government has made a lot of noise about injunctions and courts interfering with executive power and SCOTUS is agreeing with them. So, expect that legal action will be taken and then these things might happen.
Government will argue that executive power can decide if the contracts are "suggestions" or not.
If that doesn't work, try to reduce the scope of the injunction such that it applies to specific set of contracts. And then stonewall those contracts.
If the case is still lost, government will quickly appeal and file for temporary relief. If temporary relief is not coming in the short term, chose to ignore the court because executive power is above everything else.
Repeat this till it gets to SCOTUS and get a specific carve out and go to step 1 - stonewall these contracts.
I'd say given the on again, off again tariffs, courts acting like this and government retroactive actions like against Intel (CHIPS grant money was withheld to take 10% stake) it can be safely said it is no longer place for many long-term investment.
This is nothing new here ands it’s no different than Biden stopping border wall construction after he was elected. It’s not special just because Trump is doing it to a wind farm.
The difference is that the border wall was an expensive publicity stunt and this is a working wind farm that will actually accomplish its intended purpose if completed. it's worth noting that border wall construction in fact resumed under Biden because the money was legally appropriated for that purpose and the President lacked the power to redirect the funding on his own (https://www.factcheck.org/2023/10/bidens-border-wall-explain...).
• The border wall was a government project, and a large chunk of the money for it came Trump declaring a national emergency and using that to redirect around $7 billion of funding meant for other things to it after Congress refused to provide the level of funding he wanted.
Biden cancelled those parts that Trump had added. He did not cancel those parts that Congress had voted to fund. He wanted those stopped too but went about it through normal channels: he asked Congress to cancel them. Congress did not, and so his administration continued constructing those parts.
Trump appears to have particular hatred for the wind farms, not necessarily for all the renewables. He was talking about it, he brings it up when visiting European countries. What's up with that is it like a NIMBY thing?
They mention things like wind farms killing birds other says it's making noise or looking ugly but even though I never lived around a wind farm, I have came close to some large wind farms and they looked futuristic to me I didn't hear any noise. I'm not convinced that is uglier or noisier than any other modern infrastructure, like roads or planes.
Is this about money? is this ideological? what is this, what's going on?
I never understood this talking point either. There are many small wind farms erected in key hillstations near my city - and the scenery looks even more beautiful with them! Most people I know agree that wind farms are rather picturesque, I never understood this peculiar American distaste for them.
> Is this about money? is this ideological? what is this, what's going on?
The proximate cause is that the fossil fuel lobby went all-in on getting Trump elected. They paid big miney [1] and they expect a payback for that. Moves against renewables, electric vehicles, regulation, etc. are part of the transaction.
More widely, renewables occupy an adjacent space in the conservative worldview to environmentalists and the liberal left. Being seen to destroy them reinforces Trump's leadership of his base. And emphasising use of traditional, domestic, fossil-based energy sources appeals to nationalist/traditionalist sentiment.
>Trump appears to have particular hatred for the wind farms,
You'd think a "drill baby drill" attitude would be more in line with his platform but a tiger can't change its stripes. Waspy east coast democrats all hate wind farms because they and their buddies all own waterfront property.
Personally, I think he's missing a great opportunity to really stick it to people who deserve to have it stuck to them (for a variety of reasons somewhat tangential to red/blue politics) while furthering the energy, economic and industrial goals of the nation.
Wind farms have been the subject of a long running disinformation campaign from fossil fuel interests.
They got cheaper earlier than solar, and while both are still declining in cost solar is now pulling ahead and is likely to be the majority threat to fossil fuels going forward.
He's mostly just repeating half remembered lies from Fox News and allied media.
Politics aside, why not let the market drive the adoption of renewables? The former administration went to great lengths to penalize petroleum and subsidize solar and wind, without much regard for the damage this would do to the economy.
I'm all for funding the development of alternative energy sources, but forcing their deployment before they're viable is a mistake.
Forcing their deployment is how you make them cheap enough to compete in the market without subsidies.
It’s how industrial economies of scale work. The more of something you do the cheaper it is. Bootstrapping an industry is analogous to overcoming the activation energy for a chemical reaction.
The rate of scaling is different for different tech, and it’s actually quite good for renewables. That’s because solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries are incrementally deployable and subject to rapid iteration. It looks more like the electronics industry or, in the case of windmills, the car and truck industry, than the conventional power plant industry. Look up the rate at which these technologies have gotten cheaper. For solar annd batteries in particular it’s almost like Moore’s law.
It would never have gotten started without subsidies. Most things are deeply unprofitable at first.
Fossil fuels also require massive subsidies to bootstrap until they could scale. Look into the history of Standard Oil, the railroads, and electrification. The two world wars also helped.
One of the things that deeply challenged the minarchist libertarianism I held when younger was seeing that virtually nothing happens in tech or industry without state bootstrapping. Someone must be prepared to set huge piles of money on fire to start anything.
Once things get going they can be profitable in a free market. Solar is there in markets with high sun exposure. Battery storage is there in markets with a high power cost arbitrage spread. Both are still getting cheaper. Solar may be the cheapest source of power in a decade in most of the world.
Computing and the Internet is the same. The latter was originally called DARPAnet.
BTW the biggest disadvantage of nuclear vs renewables is that it is much more of a slog to scale. It doesn’t get cheaper as quickly due to slow iteration time and capital intensive large projects.
The title says because of national security, but no where in the article does it explain how a new wind energy farm poses any such security threat.
Is there actually a threat, or is it just that Trump needs to cite national security in order to cancel the work. In other words, its yet another blatant abuse of executive power.
Probably not. It seems to have come as a surprise. They are not loitering - either the wave conditions did not allow for installation or they are in port for resupply.
Additional context missing in the NPR: Denmark is the majority owner of the offshore wind company, Ørsted, holding 50.1% of its shares (has to hold a majority by law[0]). This is could be Trump retaliating against or pressurizing the Danish government—likely his ongoing attempt to anschluss Greenland.
edit to add: Moreover, Denmark's foreign minister visited California this Friday, and met with Gavin Newsom[1]—obviously a provocation to Trump, given Newsom's political actions. A connection FT also made[2].
I don't know why I'm being mass-downvoted. This is a perfectly valid theory—it'd be a continuation of a retaliation threat Trump himself made, overtly [3].
You aren't, and your post hasn't even existed for a tenth of one day, give it at least a week or so to settle out before raising your blood pressure about a score you might've had for a fraction of a moment before it changed.
That said, regardless of the (imo probable) correctness of your theory, commentary about being downvoted runs contrary to HN's posting guidelines, so you might expect downvotes in the future for that alone.
Readit News
Absolutely this, there’s no longer any confidence to begin a project anymore. Would like to see the legal action go ahead against the government and set a standard that contracts can’t be treated just as “suggestions”.
If I was pharma I would think twice before investing In a factory that can be taken by the state just like that.
EDIT: I was not aware that something was paid. Every time I saw trump on TV he said he got it for nothing. Yeah I know he lies a lot and I should have checked more into it. This is dangerous however as internationally you don't always get the details right away and generally one believes what a head of state says.
I know that this is how it was reported everywhere including here, but I recently learned that it's apparently false. The US just bought shares. From https://www.reuters.com/business/us-take-10-equity-stake-int...:
> Under the agreement, the U.S. will purchase a 9.9% stake in Intel for $8.9 billion, or $20.47 per share, which represents a discount of about $4 from Intel's closing share price of $24.80 on Friday.
So they bought a 9.9% stake at a slight discount. (And just have to go back a couple of weeks to find Intel's stock price at under $20.47 per share, so I'm not sure you can really call it a real "discount").
I assumed they were buying shares like any other investor. How are they getting it for free?
Under Biden there was money to be granted (as in: via a grant, Congressionally approved) to Intel. Trump then held the grant hostage in return for government ownership of Intel shares.
There's also a threat that this deali supposedly eases around the Intel CEO that Trump said was 'too connected' to China.
It's either borderline or blatantly illegal, but there are likely no parties eligible to contest, or interested in contesting, it in court.
(Based on my memory of someone's breakdown of a few examples like this - there's a chance I'm conflating a couple of different but related things, the deal with Nvidia to allow selling of some more advanced chips to China being another)
Government will argue that executive power can decide if the contracts are "suggestions" or not.
If that doesn't work, try to reduce the scope of the injunction such that it applies to specific set of contracts. And then stonewall those contracts.
If the case is still lost, government will quickly appeal and file for temporary relief. If temporary relief is not coming in the short term, chose to ignore the court because executive power is above everything else.
Repeat this till it gets to SCOTUS and get a specific carve out and go to step 1 - stonewall these contracts.
I'd say given the on again, off again tariffs, courts acting like this and government retroactive actions like against Intel (CHIPS grant money was withheld to take 10% stake) it can be safely said it is no longer place for many long-term investment.
Dead Comment
• The border wall was a government project, and a large chunk of the money for it came Trump declaring a national emergency and using that to redirect around $7 billion of funding meant for other things to it after Congress refused to provide the level of funding he wanted.
Biden cancelled those parts that Trump had added. He did not cancel those parts that Congress had voted to fund. He wanted those stopped too but went about it through normal channels: he asked Congress to cancel them. Congress did not, and so his administration continued constructing those parts.
• The wind farm is a private project.
They mention things like wind farms killing birds other says it's making noise or looking ugly but even though I never lived around a wind farm, I have came close to some large wind farms and they looked futuristic to me I didn't hear any noise. I'm not convinced that is uglier or noisier than any other modern infrastructure, like roads or planes.
Is this about money? is this ideological? what is this, what's going on?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c15l3knp4xyo
The proximate cause is that the fossil fuel lobby went all-in on getting Trump elected. They paid big miney [1] and they expect a payback for that. Moves against renewables, electric vehicles, regulation, etc. are part of the transaction.
More widely, renewables occupy an adjacent space in the conservative worldview to environmentalists and the liberal left. Being seen to destroy them reinforces Trump's leadership of his base. And emphasising use of traditional, domestic, fossil-based energy sources appeals to nationalist/traditionalist sentiment.
So its money and ideology.
[1] https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2025/01/the-fossil-fuel-i...
You'd think a "drill baby drill" attitude would be more in line with his platform but a tiger can't change its stripes. Waspy east coast democrats all hate wind farms because they and their buddies all own waterfront property.
Personally, I think he's missing a great opportunity to really stick it to people who deserve to have it stuck to them (for a variety of reasons somewhat tangential to red/blue politics) while furthering the energy, economic and industrial goals of the nation.
They got cheaper earlier than solar, and while both are still declining in cost solar is now pulling ahead and is likely to be the majority threat to fossil fuels going forward.
He's mostly just repeating half remembered lies from Fox News and allied media.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44991696
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44966233
I'm all for funding the development of alternative energy sources, but forcing their deployment before they're viable is a mistake.
It’s how industrial economies of scale work. The more of something you do the cheaper it is. Bootstrapping an industry is analogous to overcoming the activation energy for a chemical reaction.
The rate of scaling is different for different tech, and it’s actually quite good for renewables. That’s because solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries are incrementally deployable and subject to rapid iteration. It looks more like the electronics industry or, in the case of windmills, the car and truck industry, than the conventional power plant industry. Look up the rate at which these technologies have gotten cheaper. For solar annd batteries in particular it’s almost like Moore’s law.
It would never have gotten started without subsidies. Most things are deeply unprofitable at first.
Fossil fuels also require massive subsidies to bootstrap until they could scale. Look into the history of Standard Oil, the railroads, and electrification. The two world wars also helped.
One of the things that deeply challenged the minarchist libertarianism I held when younger was seeing that virtually nothing happens in tech or industry without state bootstrapping. Someone must be prepared to set huge piles of money on fire to start anything.
Once things get going they can be profitable in a free market. Solar is there in markets with high sun exposure. Battery storage is there in markets with a high power cost arbitrage spread. Both are still getting cheaper. Solar may be the cheapest source of power in a decade in most of the world.
Computing and the Internet is the same. The latter was originally called DARPAnet.
BTW the biggest disadvantage of nuclear vs renewables is that it is much more of a slog to scale. It doesn’t get cheaper as quickly due to slow iteration time and capital intensive large projects.
Above ground power lines and wind farm plans have been stopped before due to it.
Is there actually a threat, or is it just that Trump needs to cite national security in order to cancel the work. In other words, its yet another blatant abuse of executive power.
I wonder if that's related to this.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ørsted_(company)#Shareholders
edit to add: Moreover, Denmark's foreign minister visited California this Friday, and met with Gavin Newsom[1]—obviously a provocation to Trump, given Newsom's political actions. A connection FT also made[2].
I don't know why I'm being mass-downvoted. This is a perfectly valid theory—it'd be a continuation of a retaliation threat Trump himself made, overtly [3].
[1] https://www.nbcbayarea.com/california-3/newsom-partnership-d... ("Newsom signs partnership with Denmark on climate and tech" (Aug. 22))
[2] https://www.ft.com/content/27bce438-9008-4c46-979a-26217e75a... ( https://archive.is/r2FfQ ) ("Ørsted hit by US stop-work order on Rhode Island wind farm")
[3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-01-07/trump-... ("Trump Threatens Denmark With Tariffs Over Greenland" (Jan. 7))
You aren't, and your post hasn't even existed for a tenth of one day, give it at least a week or so to settle out before raising your blood pressure about a score you might've had for a fraction of a moment before it changed.
That said, regardless of the (imo probable) correctness of your theory, commentary about being downvoted runs contrary to HN's posting guidelines, so you might expect downvotes in the future for that alone.