MW Three sentences from Trump - on, of all things, the North Sea - tie together many of his strongest-held views

By Steve Goldstein

Oil, wind, and golf are all joined together in president-elect's latest musing

By the standards of President-elect Donald Trump, his latest musing on the U.K. is fairly tame.

"The U.K. is making a very big mistake. Open up the North Sea. Get rid of Windmills," Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform, which is operated by Trump Media & Technology $(DJT)$, a company he mostly owns.

That post links to an article from the Aberdeen & Grampian Chamber of Commerce in Scotland, about APA's Apache Corp. $(APA)$ planning to wind down North Sea production earlier than planned due to the windfall tax the U.K. has imposed.

That windfall tax has hit several producers - Shell $(SHEL)$ and Equinor $(EQNR)$ last month, for instance, agreed to merge their North Sea operations. Keir Starmer, the new U.K. prime minister, pledged last year not to grant any new licenses for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, and the sector is paying a windfall tax that Conservative Chancellor Jeremy Hunt extended through 2028.

Trump throughout his campaign has talked of the need to bolster U.S. oil production, which nonetheless has hit record levels under President Joe Biden. Historically Trump has been supportive of overseas drilling by U.S. companies - often lamenting the U.S. leaving Iraq without the oil, for instance.

He also has pledged to halt U.S. offshore wind energy projects on day one of his second administration. Investors have punished wind plays - the Global X Wind Energy ETF WNDY, for instance, is down 24% from its early October highs.

More pertinent to this post, Trump has long complained that wind turbines ruin the views from his golf course in Scotland, hence his request to "stop windmills." He lost an appeal to the U.K. Supreme Court to block turbines from being built about two miles from his golf course.

Trump usually if not entirely calls turbines "windmills" and has ascribed all manner of ills, from cancer to whale deaths, on turbines.

The golf course, Trump International Scotland, is in Aberdeen, which is why he presumably follows the news coming from its local chamber of commerce. That investment hasn't been a lucrative one - the course lost GBP1.4 million ($1.7 million) in 2023, after a GBP738,000 loss in 2022.

Trump's posting of a chamber of commerce link marks a departure from his usual diet of amplifying conservative news sources, right-wing influencers and memes.

-Steve Goldstein

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January 03, 2025 04:31 ET (09:31 GMT)

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