DAVID BLACKMON: Trump DPA Orders Shift Energy Dominance Agenda Into High Gear
President Donald Trump has not been shy about wielding his executive power to boost domestic energy production and infrastructure throughout his second presidency. It’s all a piece of the “Build, Baby, Build” agenda…
President Donald Trump has not been shy about wielding his executive power to boost domestic energy production and infrastructure throughout his second presidency. It’s all a piece of the “Build, Baby, Build” agenda, and the President made a major move this week to further shift that program into high gear.
On April 20, the White House released five Presidential Determinations under Section 303 of the Defense Production Act, each one declaring critical segments of America’s energy infrastructure “essential to national defense.”
The new orders represent practical, targeted actions built squarely on Trump’s Jan. 20, 2025, Executive Order 14156, which declared a national energy emergency. That order rightly identified America’s inadequate and increasingly intermittent energy supply as an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to America’s economy, national security, and foreign policy.
The first order focuses on large-scale energy and energy-related infrastructure. It covers everything from power plant development and manufacturing to engineering, site preparation, permitting, and early-stage financing. The president explicitly finds that financing risks, regulatory delays, and market barriers prevent industry from moving fast enough on its own. So, the Defense Production Act steps in, authorizing Energy Secretary Chris Wright to make purchases, issue commitments, and provide financial instruments to get these projects unstuck and built.
Order number two zeroes in on the grid itself – the aging, constrained backbone of our entire economy that fell into such disrepair across four years of the Biden Autopen presidency. Transformers, high-voltage transmission lines, advanced conductors, power electronics, substations, circuit breakers, and the critical raw materials like electrical core steel are all now prioritized. Long lead times and foreign dependence have left us vulnerable to blackouts and worse. This determination treats the domestic supply chain for grid equipment as a national defense imperative, directing federal action to rebuild it here at home.