President Donald Trump has come into office signing a record number of first-day executive orders and making other pronouncements.
How do these affect Virginia? Or do they? The impact varies from topic to topic. Here’s a rough guide to seven of them, ranked in order from no impact to a lot of impact.
1. Trump wants to halt wind energy development
Read the order here.
This would seem to be a big deal for Virginia since Dominion Energy has the largest offshore wind project in the country and one of the largest in the world. Actually, this would have no impact on that project. Dominion already has all the permits it needs, and two of the 176 turbines are already up and running. Trump’s order would not revoke existing permits, just temporarily halt new ones. (Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy. As I always like to say, you can be a donor and have no say. Here’s how.)
Dominion does plan additional offshore wind, some of that off the coast of North Carolina. However, Dominion does not plan to develop that until the 2030s, with the biggest tranches scheduled for 2034 and 2039. Trump’s term ends on Jan. 20, 2029. Dominion started construction on its existing offshore wind project in 2024, with completion scheduled for 2026. Using that three-year timeline, what really matters is who the president will be in 2031 and 2036. In theory, the Trump administration could move to cancel existing leases, although if he tried that in Virginia, he’d run afoul of Republicans who have backed the Dominion project — including Rep. Jen Kiggans, R-Virginia Beach, who represents the congressional district involved. In Virginia, we’re accustomed to hearing Gov. Glenn Youngkin tout an “all of the above” energy platform; Trump does not believe in “all of the above.”
The offshore wind order had been expected. What was unexpected was that it covers onshore wind as well. Virginia presently has no utility-scale onshore wind, but Apex Clean Energy of Charlottesville is planning a wind project in Botetourt County. Apex, like Dominion, has already received all its federal permits.
The New College Institute in Martinsville has programs that include training wind energy workers, both onshore and offshore. However, while Trump’s order appears likely to slow growth in the wind industry, it would not necessarily undo the wind projects that now exist, so those impacts in Martinsville might be slight or nonexistent. Any slowing in wind energy would have a potential impact on Southwest Virginia, where the economic development group InvestSWVA has promoted the region as a good place for companies who make parts for the wind industry.
One curiosity in Trump’s aversion to wind is how much of the wind energy involves American manufacturing. While there’s a lot of attention on how many solar panels are made in other countries (lots), the wind industry is largely domestic. According to the Lawrence National Berkeley Lab, 88% of the wind capacity installed in the U.S. involves at least one American manufacturer. According to the lab, “the share of domestic manufacturing content for nacelle assembly exceeds 85 percent, while towers are between 80 to 85 percent. Blades and hubs also have strong domestic content, estimated between 50 to 70 percent.” A recent report by the Oceantic Network found wind energy supply chain jobs in 40 states (including Virginia); an earlier report found that wind technicians were the fastest-growing job sector in the country, with the highest percentages in the Dakotas. You’d think a pro-manufacturing president would like that.
That brings us to another curiosity: How much of the wind energy is concentrated in Republican states. The states most dependent on wind energy are in the Midwest — South Dakota gets 60% of its energy from wind, Iowa almost 55%. Trump wants to promote fossil fuels, but wind is creating American manufacturing jobs and powering some conservative states.
However, even if Trump wanted to undo that dependence on wind, that can’t simply be done with the flick of a switch. Utilities don’t make investment decisions on the four-year election cycles; they make them based on 40-year time horizons. Trump in his first term and Joe Biden in his term had clear, and conflicting, goals on energy, but neither had that much impact on the marketplace.
2. Trump wants Americans to go to Mars
Inaugural address: “And we will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars.”
Don’t laugh.
In many ways, we are closer to getting to Mars than we were to the moon when President John Kennedy made his famous vow. When Kennedy declared in May 1961 that the United States should land on the moon before the end of the decade, the American experience with human spaceflight consisted of a single up-and-down 15-minute sub-orbital flight. Even the Soviets had done nothing more than orbit the earth, just once. Nobody really knew how long the human body could endure weightlessness. None of the technique we’d need to go to the moon — rendezvousing and docking two spacecraft — had ever been attempted. We hadn’t even landed anything on the moon, so we didn’t even know how that would work. Today, we’ve done all those things. The only thing stopping us from actually going to Mars is our willingness to spend the money and take the risks that we might be sending astronauts who don’t come back.
We know that much of the moon program played out in Virginia, particularly at the Langley Research Center in Hampton. (If you haven’t seen the movie “Hidden Figures,” now would be a good time.) Chris Kraft, a Virginia Tech graduate from Hampton, wound up as NASA flight director. (You can see him portrayed in the movie “Apollo 13.”) We also know that at least one Virginia company, BWX Technologies in Lynchburg, already is working with NASA on a Mars project. Specifically, the goal is to develop a Nuclear Thermal Propulsion system that could double the thrust of conventional chemical rockets. BWX says the goal is “to dramatically decrease travel time to and from Mars while also increasing payload size.” The path to Mars could well run through Lynchburg.
Overall, Virginia’s aerospace and defense industry employs more than 84,000 people, according to the Aerospace Industries Association. If Trump really does gear up a Mars program, it’s likely that some of that work would take place in Virginia. That “if” remains a big one, though. Trump is not the first president who vowed to send astronauts to Mars. So did Barack Obama in 2016, George W. Bush in 2004 and George H.W. Bush in 1989. Why did none of those previous declarations turn into action? Because going to Mars is expensive. Republicans in Congress want to cut spending. It’s a lot easier to rename the Gulf of Mexico than to put humans on Mars (and bring them back).
3. Trump wants more artificial intelligence, which means more data centers
Read Trump’s order here.
Trump issued an executive order rolling back some of the Biden administration’s restrictions on artificial intelligence. Later, he joined with tech executives to tout “Stargate,” a $500 billion tech industry plan that would build as many as 20 new data centers to support AI operations. Trump spoke glowingly of putting some of these data centers on federal lands, which are mostly out West. However, we’ve already seen what the growth of data centers means in Virginia: A recent state report projected that electricity demand will triple, and Youngkin has called for doubling energy production. We’ve also seen pushback against almost any form of new energy production in the state, from opposition to solar across Southside to natural gas wherever plants or pipelines have been proposed. If the Trump administration accelerates the growth of AI, that will accelerate the demand for electricity and that electricity will have to come from somewhere (just, apparently, not offshore wind, in his formulation). Data centers, which are increasingly controversial, may wind up in Democratic-voting areas of Northern Virginia, but since energy production of any kind is generally in rural areas, that means Republican-voting localities will see the consequences of this as well.
4. Trump wants to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico
Trump quote: “We’re thinking in terms of 25% on Mexico and Canada.”
Trump wants tariffs on lots of countries, but those on our two neighbors are scheduled to come Feb. 1. What happens once 25% tariffs are applied to imports from those two countries? We really don’t know. Trade wars are like any other war; as the saying goes, “No plan survives first contact with the enemy.”
Do importers simply pass the costs on to customers? Do Canada and Mexico retaliate by imposing tariffs on American goods? Trump would like to see more goods produced domestically, but, as with energy, businesses can’t make such decisions quickly. There are lots of ways this could go, especially in the auto industry, where some parts may cross the U.S.-Mexican border seven or eight times before a vehicle is finished, according to S&P Global.
In 2023, the last year for which figures are available, the top countries importing into Virginia were, in order, China ($5.67 billion), Mexico ($2.77 billion) and Canada and Germany (both at $2.74 billion). The top countries that Virginia exported to were Canada ($3.56 billion), China ($2 billion), India ($1.83 billion) and Mexico ($1.24 billion). The point being: We have a lot of trade going back and forth between Virginia and our two neighbors (with us selling more to Canadians than we buy from them), and we just don’t know how all that will play out. One industry that may feel the pinch is the newspaper business; most newsprint used in the U.S. is imported, with Canada being the top source. Also, if you like maple syrup, you ought to be buying it from Virginia’s Highland County, anyway.
5. Trump wants to end ‘birthright citizenship’
Read the order here.
This is something that is already in the courts and will stay there until there’s a ruling someday by the U.S. Supreme Court. The legal issue is whether the 14th Amendment, which establishes birthright citizenship, applies to the children of immigrants who aren’t here without authorization. (I addressed the background in a previous column.) We don’t know exactly how many children we’re talking about, although a Pew Research Center study in 2019 said the number of births to parents who are here without legal status peaked at 390,000 in 2007 and had declined to 250,000 in 2016.
Here’s what we do know, though: Virginia’s immigrant community is concentrated in Northern Virginia. Communities in Northern Virginia have the youngest median ages in the state, so it’s logical to conclude that the most immediate effects of Trump’s move to treat such children as noncitizens would mostly be in Northern Virginia.
The larger question is whether Trump’s actions have the effect of slowing legal immigration. An Old Dominion University report last year said that the only reason Virginia has gained population since 2020 is because of immigration. If immigration of any sort slows down, then Virginia is at risk of losing population for the first time since the 1820s.
6. Trump wants federal workers back in the office
Read the order here. Read the related order on Schedule F here.
Given the size of federal employment in Northern Virginia, anything dealing with the federal workforce will have some impact. Trump has issued two orders of interest. One, the so-called “Schedule F” order, removes some civil service protections. The other ends remote work. That’s the one of most interest to us.
In a previous column, I addressed how, since the pandemic, it appears that many federal workers may have moved out of Northern Virginia and into rural Virginia. Any attempt to call them back into the office would seem to have economic impacts far beyond the Beltway. Irony: If the back-to-the-office order has the effect of slowing the growth of remote work, which has brought new spending money into communities, that would have negative economic consequences for many Republican-voting rural localities.
I understand why Trump wants to reduce the federal workforce, but I’d make the case that a better Republican position would be to promote more remote work because that would make it possible for more residents of Republican-voting rural communities to work for the federal government. He didn’t ask me, though.
7. Trump ‘pauses’ certain spending from the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act
Read the order here.
This is the big one. The Inflation Reduction Act — more popularly called “the climate bill” — was never popular with Republicans, so we shouldn’t be surprised that Trump is trying to halt the spending it sets in motion. The surprise is that Trump included the infrastructure bill, which passed the Senate (but not the House) with a bipartisan majority. Trump’s order frames this as “terminating the Green New Deal,” although much of the spending that flows out of both of these bills has little to do with any kind of “green” policy.
In a press release in November, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said Virginia had received $10.5 billion from the infrastructure bill and linked to a list of more than 350 projects — a list that the Trump administration has since taken offline. Among the ones mentioned in the release: Broadband funding in Southwest and Central Virginia. Pollution cleanup at the Dublin Industrial Park in Pulaski County. Abandoned mine cleanup in coal country. Funding to expand the Long Bridge over the Potomac River, which is necessary to expand any passenger rail service from Virginia to the Northeast. Expansion of the port in Norfolk.
Likewise, lots of awards have been made under the Inflation Reduction Act that don’t seem related to “green” policy at all — money for housing projects, for instance, where the only “green” aspect appeared to be the requirement that the project have an electric vehicle charging station. A follow-up memo from the White House said that Trump’s directive only dealt with energy-related projects, but it’s unclear whether those housing projects with a single EV charger count as an energy project or not. More significantly, grants directed to two big projects in Southwest and Southside are now in question: One to the Volvo truck plant in Pulaski County, another to the proposed Microporous battery plant in Pittsylvania County. The former involves a major employer in a district represented by one Republican congressman (Morgan Griffith), the second involves a potential major employer in a district represented by another Republican congressman (John McGuire). Now you can see how complicated some of these politics are. It’s one thing to declare a termination of “the Green New Deal” when that just seems a “woke” slogan, it’s another when those grants involve manufacturing jobs in strongly Republican districts.
It’s also unclear how much of this money has been disbursed and how much of it hasn’t. Cardinal is looking into all this; for starters, see today’s story by Matt Busse and Grace Mamon. Regardless of how that works out, there are lots of other communities across Southwest and Southside that have a stake in Trump’s decision to halt spending from these two bills.
What happened this week in the governor’s race
Although the big political news this week was out of Washington, the likely candidates for Virginia’s next governor were making moves of their own. I’ll wrap up what’s been happening in this week’s edition of West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that goes out Friday afternoons. You can sign up here: