Trump was terrible for coal (miners)

Coal's “daddy” went to the store for milk and never came home

Once again, I promise I’ll get to part 2 of “Do Appalachians vote against their interests” soon - hopefully before the end of the year. But until then, here’s a short hot take of mine that I don’t think gets enough attention.

A (probably stupid) metaphor

The relationship between Donald Trump and coal miners is similar to that of a deadbeat dad (DT) and his kid (miners). The dad shows up late to the house after pounding some cold ones at the beer joint with his buddies, and the kid (probably named Cole) runs up to him — elated to see him. The dad sits the kid on his lap and tells him about all the great things they’re going to do this weekend — how he’s going to take him to a baseball game, then crush a large pizza at Chuck-E-Cheese¹, and watch Minecraft videos on YouTube together.²

But when that weekend comes, the kid is left waiting for his dad, who is nowhere to be seen. The dad’s narcissism prevents him from seeing himself other than father-of-the-year. To some extent, you can’t blame the kid for believing the dad would come through. The dad was really the only one even promising him he’d take him to Chuck-E-Cheese.

Trump made promises he knew he couldn’t keep

The coal industry was in decline in the run-up to the 2016 election — you know, the election that ushered in the “rabies-fueled racoon engorging itself on month-old McDonald’s dumpster trash” era of American politics that we now experience. Coal mining jobs were decreasing, coal-fired plants were closing, the market was shifting toward natural gas and renewables, and the export market demands were weakening.

But that didn’t stop slick D from promising to “put our miners back to work” and that deregulating the industry would bring back those long lost coal jobs.

Anyone who has followed Trump for more than a few seconds knows that reality never gets in the way of serving his immediate needs, so its not shocking that he made broad sweeping promises to miners in heavy mining places during the primary and general election in hopes of winning.

But lets just take a casual glance at what the industry looked like under Trump’s presidency (January 2017-2021)

• U.S. coal production fell from 774 million short tons in 2017 to 535 million short tons in 2020 — a nearly 31% decrease³

• Coal’s share of the U.S. electricity generation dropped 11% from 2017-2020, from 30% to 19%

• Over 50 coal-fired power plants closed between 2017 and 2021, creating a stark contrast between what Trump said and what reality turned out.

And, the biggie….

• Coal jobs fell from approximately 50,800 to 38,100 between January 2017 and January 2021

I’m not someone cheerleading for coal jobs to disappear. I think the future needs to be one where we produce clean energy and transition away from fossil fuels — with a big part of that being solar, wind, and especially nuclear — but I don’t believe that should be done at the expense of coal miners, who have sacrificed their bodies (and sometimes, their lives) to power our country.

What that solution should be remains to be determined, but its pretty obvious that Donald Trump wrote big checks to coal miners he couldn’t cash, and the miners are left with nothing.

1. Short for Charles Entertainment Cheese

2. Updated for the modern era

3. To those saying, “BUT THE PANDEMIC!” Yes. The pandemic did play a role. But production declined in years before that as well. In fact, in 2019 the US produced 706 million short tons of coal, which was a 7% decrease from previous years.