Developers and miners struggled for a decade to break ground on a lifeline for a fading industry: an export terminal on the California coast to ship coal from the rural US west to Asian markets that use it to fuel power generation. The long-stalled project attracted little financing from investors and lenders. But after meetings between industry executives, coal-country politicians and senior US officials, Donald Trump’s administration awarded $75mn in June to finally get it going.
The West Gateway project’s salvation illustrates how the coal industry has revived its fortunes in Washington through extraordinary access and influence with the White House, turning that access into policy. It has become just one facet of the Trump administration’s multibillion-dollar effort to revive the coal industry, sidelined decades ago in favour of cleaner-burning lower-cost alternatives. Industry executives have cultivated direct relationships with senior officials, helped shape US policy and fed priorities into a White House-led process.
The result has been action on much of the industry’s wish list, from weaker pollution rules and longer lives for ageing power plants to cheaper federal leases, public funding and help opening export markets. A processing facility in Utah. The West Gateway project would transport coal over nearly 1,000 miles of rail to the California coast for export to Asia.
While the biggest headlines from Trump’s energy policy have sprung from his oil-focused gambits in Venezuela and Iran, in his second presidency he has thrown the weight of his presidency behind a revival of the coal industry. He rhapsodises about “clean, beautiful coal” in public appearances and issues orders ensuring the material’s use as a fuel source. An FT analysis of 1,583 executive orders signed since 1993 found his second term alone accounts for eight of the 22 orders explicitly mentioning coal — more than any previous president or presidential term.
Trump’s fondness for coal is reciprocated in the political support he received from America’s coal country. Trump won nearly two-thirds of the vote in counties with at least one operating coal mine in the 2024 election, according to an FT analysis. By comparison, he won less than half the vote across the nation’s 2,984 counties without one.
Source: Financial Times Companies · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing