The president issues executive actions designed to revive 19th century industrial mainstay to power 21st century economy.
President Donald Trump followed through on his pledge to boost the nation’s declining $28 billion coal-mining industry this week, signing four executive orders designed to keep coal-fired power plants operating and to encourage more mining to fuel accelerating electricity demand.
“This is a very important day to me because we’re bringing back an industry that was abandoned despite the fact that it was just about the best, certainly the best, in terms of power, real power,” Trump said in the White House before he signed four executive actions Tuesday, on a stage shared with several helmeted coal-miners.
Including Tuesday’s four coal-related directives, Trump has now issued 115 executive actions since taking office on Jan. 20. About two dozen of those are related to energy, implementing his goal to use the nation’s abundant fossil fuels—oil, natural gas, coal—to generate affordable power while simultaneously exporting liquified natural gas to pare down the $37 trillion federal debt.
Those predecessor actions eliminated more than 200 rules, regulations, and executive orders issued under the Biden administration. They enabled the four coal-related orders issued Tuesday, which grant regulatory relief to 47 companies operating 66 power plants, “making them available for coal production almost in the immediate future,” Trump said.
“We’re slashing unnecessary regulations that targeted the beautiful clean coal,” the president said. “We will rapidly expedite leases for coal mining on federal lands … and we’ll streamline permitting. We will end the government bias against coal.”
Trump, after personally greeting nine senators and a dozen House representatives—all Republicans, most from energy-producing Rocky Mountain states—said he would authorize the use of the Defense Production Act under his national energy emergency declaration “to turbocharge coal-mining in America.”
The president also pledged that his administration “is going to do something that’s very different. This was my idea from about 15 minutes before I got up here. We’re going to give a guarantee that the business will not be terminated by the ups-and-downs of the world of politics” by “making it hell” to rescind approvals for coal operations.
Under the orders, coal is defined as a “mineral,” not as a “nonrenewable fossil fuel.” The designation entitles coal to the benefits of a mineral under a March executive order that increases American mineral production.
By John Haughey
