Trump Claims He Ended the Green New Deal
It's not clear he has.
American energy dominance was an important theme in President Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday. "As you heard me say many times, we have more liquid gold under our feet than any nation on earth, and by far, and now I fully authorize the most talented team ever assembled to go and get it. It's called drill, baby, drill," he said.
Energy policy in the first 45 days of the Trump administration has indeed followed this mantra. On his first day in office, the president signed an executive order to streamline oil and gas drilling and reverse former President Joe Biden's ban on offshore oil drilling in most of the United States. The executive order also "ended the [Biden] administration's insane electric vehicle mandate, saving our auto workers from economic destruction," the president said in his speech.
The president exaggerated many of his energy claims, including saying that the regulations implemented under Biden closed 100 power plants—an arbitrary number. While regulations do play a role in power plant closures, many shut down due to economic factors or aging infrastructure.
One of Trump's biggest energy-related lies came earlier in his speech when he claimed, "I terminated the ridiculous Green New Scam," referring to the Green New Deal, which was originally introduced in 2019 and again in 2023. The resolution never passed through Congress or received a "yes" on the Senate floor.
The closest bill to the Green New Deal that has been signed into law is the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which expanded and introduced tax credits and subsidies for new energy sources and established technologies like electric vehicles and solar power. The extension of these provisions could add as much as $3 trillion to the federal deficit through 2032. The IRA also supercharged the lending authority of the Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office, which has led the agency's Inspector General to deem the program as "high risk" for waste, fraud, and abuse.
While Trump ordered federal agencies to "immediately pause the disbursement of funds appropriated through the Inflation Reduction Act," which has been challenged in court, the president has yet to work with Congress to repeal the bill outright or reduce federal favoritism toward certain energy sources. Instead, his administration has pursued tariffs and protectionism, which will drive up energy prices in the United States.
