“States that embrace renewable energy are far more likely to save money for electricity consumers than those relying on fossil fuels or nuclear power, a POLITICO analysis of federal and industry data shows — findings that undermine one of the Trump administration’s main justifications for its aggressive rollback of federal clean energy policies.”
“the Energy Department announced that it will offer $625 million in funding to “reinvigorate and expand America’s coal industry.” The funding includes $350 million to modernize outdated coal power plants or recommission closed ones, and up to $175 million for coal power projects in rural communities. This announcement was coupled with an Interior Department directive to open 13.1 million acres of federal land for coal mining at lower royalty rates. The Environmental Protection Agency, meanwhile, announced on Monday it would roll back several Joe Biden-era regulations on coal plants
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In May, the Energy Department issued an order to prevent a Michigan coal plant from closing in order to prevent blackouts. The order failed to keep the lights on and cost the utility $29 million over five weeks, which is expected to be, at least in part, paid for by ratepayers
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These cost hikes are likely to escalate if the federal government continues to force power plants to stay open. An August report from Grid Strategies, a power sector consulting firm, estimates that ratepayers could pay more than $3 billion per year through 2028 if the Energy Department “mandates that the large fossil power plants scheduled to retire between now and the end of 2028 remain open.” This figure could soar to $6 billion per year through 2028 if additional power plants move up their retirement dates to secure government subsidies.
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the federal government has opened up millions of dollars in funding for coal projects and passed several measures to benefit coal, including subsidizing coal production overseas. The cost of those actions won’t necessarily show up in monthly utility bills—but it will force the federal government to borrow more heavily in the future, at a time when the national debt is already unsustainably large
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Ben King, director of the Rhodium Group’s energy program, told Semafor “the price of coal would need to fall by at least half,” to “change the calculus” and make coal more attractive to investors than natural gas or renewables. Brendan Pierpont, director of electricity modeling at the think tank Energy Innovation, told the outlet, “this funding is essentially cash for clunkers, but without trading in the clunkers.”
Trump’s latest coal maneuver will benefit utilities and coal companies, but it will come at the expense of taxpayers, who will be forced to finance yet another wasteful government spending account, and ratepayers who will likely see their utility bills continue to climb.”
“Even as some Republicans mocked economists for predicting prices would rise as a result of tariffs, there was a whistling-past-the-graveyard quality to the snickering. Yes, tariffs that had been threatened, delayed, and only partially implemented hadn’t yet much increased costs for consumers, but there were clear signs that importers were rushing to beat high customs duties, and that trouble was on the way. Now we’ve had a weak jobs report and a higher-than-expected producer price index (PPI), and it’s clear that tariffs perform just as we were warned: They raise prices for domestic businesses and consumers.”
“The Trump administration’s 50 percent tariffs on imported steel and aluminum were expanded this week to cover hundreds of imports that plainly are not steel or aluminum. Among the items targeted by the new tariffs: dairy products like milk and cream, as well as gasoline and other fuels, fire extinguishers, baby strollers, furniture, engines, and motorcycles. In short, anything that contains steel or aluminum or that is (as with dairy products) transported or stored in steel or aluminum containers could now be subject to those massive import taxes.”
“The world’s supply of chocolate depends on the global trade of cocoa beans, which are grown exclusively in equatorial climates across Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The United States produces more chocolate than any other country in the world, but there would be no American chocolate-making businesses, large or small, without imports.
A lot of American manufacturing is like that too: U.S.-based businesses rely on imported raw materials when making everything from candy bars to new cars. Policies that make those inputs more expensive or difficult to obtain—policies such as the Trump administration’s tariffs—are leaving a bitter taste.
Chocolatiers, in particular, say trade barriers are a recipe for higher prices, lower quality, less innovation, and smaller profits. Doesn’t sound very sweet, does it?”
“it’s not the policy that’s holding nuclear back: It’s the industry. All the incentives and permitting reforms the government can muster won’t change the basic economics that have led to just three new nuclear plants getting built in the U.S. this century: It takes too long, is too expensive and is only getting pricier.”
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” The nuclear industry has as much going for it right now as it’s ever had. U.S. electricity demand is growing for the first time in 20 years as data centers and artificial intelligence companies proliferate.”
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“The average cost of large-scale solar has fallen 84 percent since 2009, to $58 per megawatt-hour, while nuclear power has risen 47 percent, to $180”
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“the problem isn’t limited to the U.S. The U.K., France and Finland have all seen major cost and timeline overruns with their most recent plants. China, which is building more nuclear than anyone, has gotten its timelines down the farthest but is still around 7 years,”
Trump’s tariffs are costly, but if Trump takes over the financial power currently held by the Fed, that’s a much more dangerous threat to the prosperity and democracy of the United States. Especially when you combine this with Trump’s other potentially costly actions like limiting science and scientists, Trump’s constellation of bad economic policies could add up to a considerably weaker U.S. economy.
“If enacted across the board, Trump’s order would mean pharmaceutical companies must sell drugs to Americans at the lowest prices they were offering anybody else in the world.”
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“Americans do pay significantly more for prescription drugs than people in other developed nations, but the reasons for that are more complicated than Trump suggests.
“There are many good reasons why we should pay more for earlier access to new medications than our trading partners,” wrote Darius Lakdawalla and Dana Goldman of the University of Southern California’s Schaeffer Institute for Public Policy & Government Service. “As the world’s largest market for pharmaceuticals, America finds itself in the unique position of accruing the lion’s share of the benefits from new medicines. We often recoup these additional costs in the form of longer and healthier lives.””
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“”facing a choice between deep cuts in their U.S. pricing or the loss of weakly profitable overseas markets,” the companies may simply exit foreign markets altogether, “leaving U.S. consumers with the same prices, pharmaceutical manufacturers with lower profits, and future generations with less innovation.””
“For millions of families, a spike in health care costs might be around the corner because crucial subsidies are set to expire at the end of next year. Some families will see their premiums rise by thousands of dollars; others might lose their insurance altogether.
In 2021, President Joe Biden signed into law the American Rescue Plan Act, which included a provision that enhanced the premium tax credit — a piece of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that subsidized the cost of premiums for some lower- and middle-income families. The Biden-era enhancements, which essentially expanded the number of people who qualify for the tax credit, were originally set to expire at the end of 2022, but Congress extended them through 2025 when it passed the Inflation Reduction Act. (For families at or slightly above the poverty line, the enhanced tax credit subsidizes the full premium. For people making more than 400 percent of the poverty line — people who were previously ineligible for this subsidy — it caps their premiums to 8.5 percent of their income.)
The enhanced premium tax credits contributed to a record number of insured people in the United States. In February 2021, before Congress expanded the premium tax credits, 11.2 million people were enrolled in health coverage through ACA marketplaces. By 2024, that number shot up to 20.8 million people.
There are many reasons for the dramatic increase in marketplace coverage — including the fact that millions of people were disenrolled from Medicaid coverage after Covid emergency measures lapsed and had to turn to other forms of insurance, including the marketplace — but the enhanced premium tax credit played a critical role. Its expansion was the main reason so many more people were able to enroll in health care coverage from the ACA marketplace, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
If Congress allows the enhanced premium tax credits to expire, millions of people will see a noticeable rise in out-of-pocket expenses. Many will likely lose their coverage, and that’s without considering how much more will be at stake if Medicaid gets slashed as well. For low-income families, particularly those who live just above the poverty line, that could be a nightmare.”
“A set of new tariffs proposed by former President Donald Trump would cost the average American family an estimated $1,700 annually—and lower-income households would be hit relatively harder, a new analysis warns.
Trump has called for a 10 percent across-the-board tariff on all imports combined with higher tariffs (potentially as high as 60 percent, he’s claimed) aimed specifically at imports from China. Together, those two policies would cost Americans about $500 billion per year, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), a trade-focused think tank.”