U.S. President Donald Trump said reducing renewable energy subsidies in favor of fossil fuels would cut household power bills in half within a year. Instead, electricity prices increased by more than 12 percent on average for U.S. households in 2025, with most expected to spend over $1,200 to heat their homes this winter.
The public isn’t happy about it. Utilities are pushing back. And they’re not alone, as Trump policies from energy and international trade to immigration face growing backlash from companies and their customers.
Trump may not like renewables, but his supporters sure do
During the 2024 campaign cycle, Trump spouted the same nonsense about wind and solar energy that he put forth during his first campaign in 2016, in an effort to make the case for supporting more coal power. But the financial picture on renewable energy has changed drastically in the last 10 years.
Right wing, Trump-supporting pundits disparaged wind and solar power as expensive and burdensome to ordinary taxpayers in 2015. That argument holds no water today. Wind and especially solar are widely recognized as the fastest and most economical way to bring more electricity onto the national grid.
Trump’s energy policies are raising the cost of electricity instead of lowering it, and First Solar has the receipts to show that Republican voters don’t like it.
The solar manufacturer recently did phone interviews with 800 people who voted for Trump in 2024 and found the majority support renewables. More than 65 percent agree the United States “needs all forms of electricity generation, including utility solar, to be built for lowering electricity costs,” compared to 22 percent who disagree, according to First Solar’s polling with the research firm Fabrizio, Lee & Associates. A full 79 percent indicated that political factors should not favor one resource over another.
Even worse for Trump allies ahead of the midterm elections this year, the majority said they’re more likely to support a candidate for Congress who supports an “all-of-the-above energy agenda” that includes renewables like solar. While just over half said they support the use of utility-scale solar at baseline, that figure jumps to 70 percent if the solar panels are made in the United States, with only 19 percent opposed, the polling found.
“[Trump] voters want America to have energy independence and for their electric bills to be affordable. They understand that utility solar energy is a key aspect in allowing that to happen,” pollsters Tony Fabrizio, David Lee and Travis Tunis said of the findings in a statement.
Hitting Trump where it hurts: From the court of public opinion to the court of law
First Solar’s decision to seek relief in the court of public opinion has to sting for Trump, who reportedly lives from one poll to the next, but that’s not the only court where renewable energy proponents are making their case.
In December, the U.S. federal government stopped work on five offshore wind farms already under construction, citing “national security risks” for which it provided little detail.
The work-stop cost project developers millions of dollars a day. All of them took the matter to court in separate cases and won, with judges ruling that work on the projects could resume.
Among them is the 2.6-gigawatt Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project that the U.S. leading utility Dominion Energy is now on track to finish in March as scheduled. The other four wind projects, which are owned partly or fully by global consortia, are also back on track after a series of decisions in their favor.
The companies’ wins in court make “it very obvious that the stop-work orders are of a politically motivated campaign against offshore wind with no rational or legal basis,” Signe Sorensen, an analyst for the renewable energy research firm Aegir Insights, told Bloomberg last week.
States along the East Coast, including Virginia and Massachusetts, are counting on power from offshore wind to keep costs down as energy use from data centers increases, Reuters reported.
Pocketbook concerns cross political boundaries
Energy companies aren’t the only ones going to court over business losses tied to U.S. federal policies. In December, the popular discount shopping club Costco went before an international trade court asking for a full refund of tariffs paid as a result of Trump’s executive orders. The company said it absorbed the cost of tariffs on some foods rather than raising prices on “key staple items” for customers, NBC News reported.
The retail giant joined a group of 1,000 mostly small companies in the case before the Court of International Trade, alleging that the tariffs Trump imposed last year are illegal because the president is not authorized to set tariffs.
Costco provides one of the rare examples of consistent corporate pushback against Trump overreach. The company is confident that its brand loyalty crosses party lines, with good reason. As CNN’s Nathanial Meyersohn reported last week, more than 90 percent of Costco members renew each year. With that support behind it, Costco has resisted Trump pressure to dismantle its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, even under threat of legal action.
“Costco’s got a really good bipartisan reputation. Everyone loves it. It’s cheap as hell and treats its workers well,” NYU professor Alison Taylor told Meyersohn. The company’s investors agree: When an anti-DEI proposal recently came up for a vote, more than 98 percent of shareholders voted it down.
When boycotts work
The second Trump administration has also sparked a new wave of grassroots boycotts reminiscent of the Sleeping Giants and #GrabYourWallet campaigns of his first turn in the Oval Office.
Even before Trump began his second term, the EV manufacturer Tesla was beginning to experience the power of consumer choice, as CEO Elon Musk began to turn off car buyers with a sharp right turn into politics. Tesla’s sales continue to slide as drivers turn to other choices.
The Minneapolis-based retailer Target has also shown visible signs of withering under a consumer boycott. The firm faced pushback for altering its LGBTQ+ advocacy in 2023 and even stronger opposition when it yielded to Trump’s anti-DEI attacks last year. Calls for Target to stand up to Trump have only intensified as federal security forces continue to terrorize the company’s home city.
Other leading corporations are now facing a new boycott movement in protest of Trump’s immigration policies. “The campaign, ‘Resist and Unsubscribe,’ was started by influential podcaster and business commentator Scott Galloway, who said he was increasingly frustrated by what he sees as the Trump administration’s indifference to protests and public outrage over immigration enforcement,” NPR reported last week.
Resist and Unsubscribe asks consumers to choose alternatives to Big Tech firms that can move markets, or that have enabled Trump to terrorize communities, or both. Some examples include buying DVDs instead of paying for Netflix or Apple TV, taking mass transit instead of Uber, and shopping locally instead of ordering from Amazon.
In another grassroots development that recalls protests during the first Trump administration, more than 800 Google employees and contractors signed a petition demanding the company cancel its contracts with federal immigration authorities.
“When Trump threatened to send the national guard to San Francisco in October, tech industry leaders called the White House. It worked: Trump backed down,” the petition reads. “Today we’re calling on our CEOs to pick up the phone again: Call the White House and demand that ICE leave our cities. Cancel all company contracts with ICE. Speak out publicly against ICE’s violence.”
With the federal government continuing to expand the nation’s network of literal concentration camps, business leaders have lost the middle ground. They can act, or they can be complicit. There is no in between.
Image: Barbara Burgess/Unsplash
