Last updated August 20, 2025
Since returning to office, Donald Trump has taken a series of deliberate actions that are driving up energy costs for American families. He’s frozen clean energy investments and imposed a national tariff tax on energy imports. From repealing tax credits to blocking new projects to slapping tariffs on a whim, Trump’s agenda has already driven utilities to request $29 billion in rate hikes this year—more than double this time last year. Meanwhile, his administration is fast-tracking energy-hungry data centers even as it strangles the homegrown clean power needed to meet surging demand.
Trump’s Energy Secretary Chris Wright recently offered an unintentional moment of honesty about the Trump administration’s energy agenda. Defending a wave of policies that are driving up energy prices, he warned, “We’re going to get blamed.” And he’s right—because basic math doesn’t lie. When you choke off new, low-cost sources of power while demand is skyrocketing, prices go up.
Donald Trump and his Republican allies are breaking their promises and driving up costs for working families. Trump vowed to “cut energy and electricity prices in half” and “make America affordable again.” Voters took him at his word.
But he made another promise too—this one to Big Oil. In exchange for $1 billion in campaign cash, Trump pledged to gut environmental protections and hand out massive new tax breaks to gas up fossil fuel profits. Six months into his presidency, he’s only delivered on that deal. His economic law handed out $18 billion in new tax giveaways, while slashing support for their clean energy competition in the process.
We’ve been tracking the many ways Trump’s agenda is failing to keep campaign pledges, hiking costs for working-class Americans, and selling them out to benefit oligarchs and the ultra-wealthy.
Below is a breakdown of actions Trump has taken, starting from the most recent and going back to January 2025 when he first took office, along with their impact on everyday Americans’ wallets: