In its heyday in the mid-20th century, the steel mills in Wilton, West Virginia, employed 13,000 people, providing workers with a relatively stable blue-collar life. In 2003, Wilton Steel filed for bankruptcy. Downtown stores boarded up their windows and young people moved out of the declining Appalachian town.
In May 2023, when I visited Wilton as Secretary of Energy, Wilton’s prospects had reversed course. Form Energy, which makes large iron-air batteries to store energy for the grid, just broke ground on a 550,000-square-foot facility. Today, the production line is running, and when the factory reaches full production, it will employ more than 750 employees, mainly locals who have been laid off from the factory.
Form Energy’s plant is one of nearly 1,000 new or expanded clean energy plants announced across the U.S. over the past four years, creating approximately 800,000 new manufacturing jobs and proving that the U.S. has begun a manufacturing renaissance.
But you can kiss this goodbye if President Trump and the new Congress roll back the laws that made it possible. Our economic competitors are waiting to attract overseas companies and turn our innovations into their prosperity.
America used to be good at building things. Around the middle of the 20th century, we produced half of the world’s steel and half of the world’s cars. By the 1970s, more Americans were working in manufacturing than ever before.
Then other countries started stealing our technology. They lure overseas companies with free capital and cheap labor. Back in the United States, policymakers adhered to a laissez-faire stance. Who are we to question the free market if employers want to move production overseas? But our economic competitors don’t play by the same rules. The free market isn’t taking away our jobs; China and Mexico have certainly done that, attracting companies through fiscal incentives.
When I became governor of Michigan in 2003, many workers who began their careers building some of the best cars in the world were ending their careers without pensions—sometimes overseas before even turning in their I.D. Train their successors. Between 2001 and 2011, approximately 60,000 U.S. factories closed.
People shouldn’t be confused as to why new factories are opening again: The United States is finally getting tough on its economic competitors. Former President Joe Biden enacted three laws — the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, the Chip and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act — that created tax credits, grants and loans to make It became cost-effective for American workers to produce American products on American soil. This is especially true for clean energy technologies like solar panels and batteries.
Form Energy received funding from a bipartisan infrastructure bill to help build the plant. It will also seek tax credits for battery production through the Inflation Reduction Act. Our clean energy law will add nearly $2 trillion to the U.S. economy over the next decade.
However, Trump appears ready to remove the incentives that are reviving U.S. manufacturing. He promised to eliminate the electric vehicle tax credit that helped save auto plants, including those in my hometown. On his first day in office, he signed an executive order declaring an urgent need for more energy, which he defined almost exclusively as oil and natural gas. There’s no mention of solar, which created thousands of new manufacturing jobs and was our largest source of new energy capacity last year.
This is a risky economic strategy. Other governments are waiting with bated breath for us to cut grants, loans and tax credits so they can use the same tools to sweet-talk the next generation of factories to their shores.
Take electric cars, for example: It’s no secret that China wants to dominate the global market. Today, it accounts for more than half of global electric vehicle production. But since the passage of the Inflation Suppression Act, more than 450 electric vehicle battery companies have announced that they will move to the United States or expand factories in the United States, and many of them have left China to do so. It would be a national disgrace if the entire industry was surrendered.
We lose more than just our jobs or our dignity. U.S. electricity demand will grow 15% over the next decade due to new data centers, factories and transportation. If the Trump administration forces the loss of wind, solar and other clean energy jobs, we will lose the technologies that help make up our energy mix. Monthly utility bills will rise and power outages will become the norm.
If the government believes that “Drill, baby, drill” will create a job boom, it is also deluding itself. The United States is already the world’s largest oil producer and natural gas exporter. Tepid oil prices and sluggish market demand have left many industry leaders weary of making major investments to increase production.
The politics of a presidential transition are delicate. The incoming administration wants to turn the page, but some policies and some people should be immune to this tug-of-war. I think of the autoworkers of Michigan and the steelworkers of West Virginia—skilled men and women who left asking whether America still needed their talents. It took us too long to respond, but thanks to these new manufacturing methods, we can finally say Yes.
Securing the next generation of American manufacturing jobs requires strong government and private sector partnerships and continued investment in domestic clean energy production. When we turned off the lights in the office on Monday, we left the next occupants with a winning plan—already in the works. It will be up to them to decide whether they want to take full advantage of this opportunity.
