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.
The third order tackles domestic petroleum production, refining, and logistics capacity. Exploration, production, gathering and transmission pipelines, storage facilities, and marine terminals are all deemed essential. Petroleum doesn’t just power your car—it fuels the military, the industrial base, and critical infrastructure. Permitting bottlenecks and financing constraints have slowed this sector for too long. No more. Federal support under the DPA will accelerate the flow of American oil.
Fourth comes natural gas transmission, processing, storage, and LNG capacity. Gathering lines, compression stations, processing plants, underground storage, liquefaction facilities, export terminals – the whole value chain. Trump rightly notes that hostile foreign actors have weaponized energy markets against us and our allies. Expanding domestic natural gas and LNG infrastructure isn’t just about keeping the lights on here; it’s about strengthening alliances and denying adversaries leverage.
Finally, and perhaps most refreshingly, the fifth order targets coal supply chains and baseload power generation capacity. Coal mining, rail and barge logistics, terminals, stockpiles, and life-extension and reliability upgrades for coal-fired plants are now officially critical to national defense. The determination makes clear what energy realists have always known: Intermittent sources cannot replace the steady, dispatchable power coal provides for defense installations, heavy industry, and the exploding electricity demands of AI and data centers.
Taken together, these five actions represent the most comprehensive federal push for all-of-the-above energy in modern history. They cut through the red tape, provide the financial backstops markets sometimes need for massive infrastructure bets, and explicitly reject the notion that we can “transition” away from reliable hydrocarbons without destroying our economy and security.
Critics on the left will complain about “corporate welfare” or “climate denial” because of course they will: That’s how they make their money. But the facts are stubborn: Biden’s war on domestic fossil fuels left us more dependent on foreign suppliers, with higher prices, fragile supply chains, and a grid teetering on the edge. Trump’s team understands that energy dominance is more than a slogan: It’s the foundation of military readiness, economic strength, and geopolitical leverage.
These DPA determinations aren’t magic bullets, but they send an unmistakable signal to investors, developers, and our allies: America is back in the real-world energy business in a big way. Wright now has the tools to act decisively to speed permitting, reshore supply chains, and speed crucial projects long stuck in bureaucratic limbo to finally break ground.
President Trump campaigned on American Energy Dominance. With these actions, he’s delivering it.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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