Donald Quixote’s War on Wind: How Trump Harms the European Wind Industry

By Simon Rogissart

Simon Rogissart is a PhD Researcher with the Ghent Institute for International and European Studies (GIES). 

This paper examines how Donald Trump’s “war on wind” affects Europe’s wind energy sector within an increasingly bipolar global energy order. While the European Union positions wind energy as a cornerstone of both its energy transition and industrial policy, the United States under Trump—portrayed as a modern Don Quixote—has launched an explicit political and regulatory offensive against the wind industry. At the same time, China’s dominant position in wind energy adds further geopolitical pressure. This paper analyses how Trump’s policies reverberate across the Atlantic and argues that the EU increasingly views the wind industry through a strategic, geopolitical lens.

Introduction

As a modern Don Quixote, Donald Trump lowered his lance at imagined giants, launching a crusade against the wind industry (Mathiesen, 2026). Speaking at the 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos, he declared that “there are windmills all over Europe” and that “they are losers”, insisting that “every time that goes around, you lose $1,000” (quod non). He further claimed that “China makes almost all of the windmills” (quod non) and sells them “to the stupid people that buy them”, while supposedly installing no wind farms domestically (quod non). Wind energy, he argued, forms part of the “Green New Scam”, which would “destroy your land” and impoverish nations—asserting that “the more windmills a country has, the more money that country loses, and the worse that country is doing” (quod non). He concluded with the familiar allegation that wind turbines “kill the birds” and “ruin your landscapes”.

While Trump labelled wind turbines as “losers”, Europe presented them as “winners”. At the North Sea Summit in Hamburg, the participating countries^[1] reaffirmed their cooperation and reiterated their ambitious target of installing 300 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2050. Europe remains firmly committed to wind energy, defending what is arguably its last major green technology stronghold against growing Chinese dominance.

As the world becomes increasingly shaped by a US–China energy bipolarity, between petrostates and electrostates, the European Union finds itself caught in the middle (Mitrova & Carbeau, 2025). Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the EU has sought to reduce its reliance on Russian gas, aiming to reach net‑zero emissions while strengthening its energy security. In doing so, it has become highly dependent on Chinese clean‑technology supply chains on the one hand, and US liquefied natural gas (LNG) on the other. As both Washington and Beijing seek to influence Europe’s technological pathway, Trump’s stance has begun to affect not only US domestic policy but also European decision‑making abroad.

Trump’s War on Wind

Under the Biden administration, the United States aimed to become a global leader in offshore wind energy, announcing targets of 30 GW of installed offshore capacity by 2030 and 110 GW by 2050 (U.S. Department of Energy, 2023). Stimulated by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the United States seemed poised to participate actively in the global clean‑tech race. By 2024, the country had 15 GW of installed onshore wind capacity and 174 MW offshore, with five offshore wind projects under construction totalling 5.8 GW (Global Wind Energy Council, 2025b; Feaster & Wamsted, 2026).

From the first day of the second Trump administration, the United States reversed course through an executive order freezing the approval of new offshore wind energy projects (The White House, 2025). Tax credits for wind projects and manufacturing capacity under the IRA were largely dismantled through the adoption of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”, while ongoing tariffs and trade disputes put further pressure on the European wind industry. In response to these US tariffs, China introduced export restrictions on rare‑earth elements and permanent magnets, affecting both US and European companies.

Beyond these broader policy shifts, President Trump also launched a targeted “war on wind”. At the end of 2025, his administration suspended leases for all major offshore wind projects under construction, citing national‑security concerns and describing them as “expensive, unreliable, heavily subsidised projects” (Millard & Muir, 2025). The projects affected include Ørsted’s Revolution Wind and Sunrise Wind, Equinor’s Empire Wind, Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, and Vineyard Wind, a project developed by Iberdrola’s Avangrid subsidiary and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. These projects were already at an advanced construction stage: Revolution Wind was roughly 80% completed, and Vineyard Wind even 95%.

Because many of these projects involve European wind companies, the impact on the European wind sector has been substantial. Ørsted—already affected by a stop‑work order in early 2025—saw its shares plummet, launched a USD 9 billion rights issue, cut 2,000 jobs (one‑third of its workforce), paused a major UK offshore project, exited two US projects, and announced the sale of its entire European onshore wind business (Millard, 2025). Although the European wind sector had already faced macro‑economic headwinds, developments in the United States served as a critical trigger. As the US market becomes increasingly unattractive, these developments create negative spillover effects for project viability elsewhere (Hancock & Millard, 2026). Investor sentiment has been heavily influenced by rising regulatory uncertainty in the United States, raising the cost of capital globally.

Trump is, however, losing the fight. A US court declared the executive order freezing new leases invalid, ruling that it was “arbitrary and capricious and contrary to law” following a lawsuit filed by seventeen states and clean‑energy groups (Muir, 2025). Another set of three US judges granted Ørsted, Equinor, and Dominion Energy permission to resume construction, though significant damage had already been done (Muir & Smyth, 2026). Nevertheless, as Trump is not known for setting grudges aside, the projects are not guaranteed a smooth path forward.

The China factor

Trump claimed that “all of the windmills, and […] sells them to the stupid people that buy them”. While Europe remains a global frontrunner in wind energy, China has indeed become the world’s largest wind‑turbine manufacturer. Chinese companies dominated the top ten global suppliers for both onshore and offshore wind in 2024 (BNEF, 2025; Global Wind Energy Council, 2025a). By contrast, the United States has only one major manufacturer, GE Vernova, which recently paused its offshore activities (Millard, 2024). Europe still holds a strong position, with three manufacturers—Vestas, Siemens Gamesa, and Nordex—ranking among the global top ten, and Siemens Gamesa even leading in offshore wind. In addition, Europe hosts several leading companies across the offshore wind value chain, such as Belgium’s DEME and Jan De Nul (Rogissart, 2025).

China’s domestic market, accounting for nearly 70% of global installations, is by far the largest in the world (Global Wind Energy Council, 2025b). Until recently, Chinese OEMs focused predominantly on this vast internal market. As a result, European OEMs maintained a strong global position, with substantial manufacturing capacity located outside China (Global Wind Energy Council, 2025a). However, growing Chinese overcapacity has pushed OEMs to expand abroad (The Economist, 2025). Consequently, Chinese manufacturers supplied 39% of all wind turbines installed outside China in 2024 (García‑Herrero & Mu, 2025).

While Trump’s hostility toward wind energy is often portrayed as ideologically driven—ruining his view from the golf course and his “love” for wildlife—the rising global presence of Chinese manufacturers, combined with the absence of strong US competitors, partly explains his increasingly aggressive stance. Although China has already established a foothold in several Eastern European onshore markets, the European offshore market remains dominated by domestic firms. Yet Chinese OEMs are increasingly seeking to enter this segment as well, illustrated by Mingyang’s first European wind‑turbine factory in Italy (Lee, 2024) and Goldwind’s plans to open a factory in Spain (Lee, 2023).

In the United Kingdom, heated debate has emerged over plans for a fully integrated EUR 1.7 billion Mingyang turbine facility in Scotland. At the forefront of Starmer’s visit to Beijing, the UK government has not yet approved the project (Millard & Parker, 2026). These initiatives have triggered domestic political opposition centred on national‑security risks. The Trump administration has actively amplified security concerns surrounding the project (Sevastopulo, Millard & Pickard, 2025), alongside warnings about the Chinese “mega‑embassy” in London. This project is an important element of Starmer’s efforts to recalibrate relations with Beijing, and has recently been approved by the UK government (Sheppard, Parker & Sevastopulo, 2026). Such US interventions underscore the underlying strategic logic: China’s growing dominance in the wind sector is perceived as a major security threat.

How Europe is fighting back

Caught between intensifying geopolitical pressures, the second von der Leyen Commission has placed the protection of Europe’s clean‑tech manufacturing capacity at the centre of its agenda through the Net‑Zero Industry Act (NZIA) and the Clean Industrial Deal. Given Europe’s strong position in global wind manufacturing, and its limited fiscal and institutional capacity to create large EU‑level funds, the EU primarily aims to safeguard its internal market rather than expand its global footprint. To that end, the European Commission introduced a resilience‑based non‑price criterion for renewable‑energy auctions under the NZIA and is seeking to go further through the proposed Industrial Accelerator Act, which would include a European‑preference criterion (Politico, 2026).

Geopolitical considerations have increasingly shaped the Commission’s approach, shifting it from a reactive to a more proactive stance. In 2024, the EU launched an investigation into Chinese wind‑turbine manufacturers in five European markets under the Foreign Subsidies Regulation (WindEurope, 2024). Since the case recently advanced to a second phase, the Commission has launched an in-depth investigation into Goldwind’s activities in the EU wind sector (European Commission, 2025). Additionally, the implementing act for the NZIA extends resilience criteria to both onshore and offshore wind. However, the EU has no supply‑chain dependency above 50% in either segment, the threshold required to activate the resilience criterion. The Commission notes that although Europe is not structurally dependent on China for wind‑energy technology, China’s global dominance requires a more anticipatory response. This logic is explicitly reflected in the implementing regulation, which refers to the People’s Republic of China by name.

North Sea leaders recently met in Hamburg to give renewed impetus to the offshore wind sector in an increasingly bipolar energy world. While it had already become clear that substituting Russian gas with renewables could not lead to a new dependence on Chinese technologies, European leaders are now equally conscious that reliance on US LNG is also unsustainable. As the EU advocates for energy security supported by European‑made wind turbines, policymakers remain determined to protect the continent’s domestic industrial base. The key question, however, is whether Europe’s wind‑energy industry—though likely to remain strong within Europe—can maintain its leadership in global markets.

[1] Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, the United Kingdom and Iceland as observer.

References

BNEF. (2025, March 17). Chinese Manufacturers Lead Global Wind Turbine Installations, BloombergNEF Report Shows.

European Commission. (2025, December 17). Commission opens in-depth foreign subsidies investigation into Goldwind's activities in the EU wind sector. Press Corner.

Feaster, S. & Wamsted, D. (2026, January 28). Offshore wind stop-work orders are costing consumers, delaying needed electricity. Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

García-Herrero, A. & Mu, H. (2025). China can decarbonise the world – but even that won’t fix its overcapacity problem. Bruegel.

Global Wind Energy Council. (2025a). Global Wind Market Development. Supply Side Data 2024.

Global Wind Energy Council. (2025b). Global Wind Report 2025.

Hancock, A. & Millard, R. (2026, January 12). Wind chiefs warn of global ‘spillover’ from Donald Trump’s green crackdown. Financial Times.

Jaller-Makarewicz, A. (2026, January 19). EU risks new energy dependence as US could supply 80% of its LNG imports by 2030. Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

Lee, A. (2023, July 25). 'Goldwind targeting Spain': could Chinese giant land in Siemens Gamesa's backyard? Recharge.

Lee, A. (2024, August 9). China's Mingyang to set up Italian factory and supply 18.8MW turbines for floating project. Recharge.

Mathiesen, K. (2026, January 27). The key climate tipping point you haven’t heard about. Politico.

Millard, R. (2024, November 12). GE Vernova boss keeps search for offshore wind turbine orders on ice. Financial Times.

Millard, R. (2025, October 9). Ørsted to cut quarter of workforce after US setbacks. Financial Times.

Millard, R. & Muir, M. (2025, December 22). US halts offshore wind projects, citing national security concerns. Financial Times.

Millard, R. & Parker, G. (2026, January 27). Octopus Energy urges Starmer to ‘embrace’ Chinese technology. Financial Times.

Mitrova, T. & Carbeau, A. (2025, December 19). The EU in a Petrostates and Electrostates World. The National Interest.

Muir, M. (2025, December 9). US judge strikes down Donald Trump’s ban on new wind permits. Financial Times.

Muir, M. & Smyth, J. (2026, January 22). Trump’s crusade against offshore wind dealt legal setback. Financial Times.

Politico. (2026, January 27). The EU’s industrial policy goes full China.

Rogissart, S. (2025). Why the Hamburg Summit is critical for the Belgian offshore wind sector. BE-WISE Insights.

Sheppard, D., Parker, G. & Sevastopulo, D. (2026, January 20). UK approves China’s ‘mega’ embassy in London. Financial Times.

Sevastopulo, D., Millard, R. & Pickard, J. (2025, June 18). US warns Britain over Chinese wind farm security risks. Financial Times.

The Economist. (2025, December 30). China’s wind giants are coming for Europe.

The White House. (2025, January 20). Temporary Withdrawal of All Areas on the Outer Continental Shelf from Offshore Wind Leasing and Review of the Federal Government’s Leasing and Permitting Practices for Wind Projects. Presidential Actions.

U.S. Department of Energy. (2023). Advancing Offshore Wind Energy in the United States. DOE/GO-102023-5888.

WindEurope. (2024, April 9). EU starts investigation into Chinese wind turbines under new Foreign Subsidies Regulation.