Trump’s ‘billion-dollar giveaway’ actually a refund to free us from costly offshore wind
By
Frank Lasee
|
April 3rd, 2026
Headlines last week (NY Times, NPR, CNN) screamed that President Donald Trump was handing nearly a billion dollars to a French energy giant to cancel building offshore wind farms. The coverage was classic gotcha journalism — misleading, incomplete, and designed to fit a tired narrative. The real story is far more straightforward and sensible.
On March 23, 2026, the Department of the Interior reached a settlement with TotalEnergies. The U.S. government is refunding $928 million — the exact amount the company paid to the Biden administration in 2022 when it won two offshore wind leases off New York/New Jersey and North Carolina.
In return, TotalEnergies will cancel both leases and formally agree not to pursue any new offshore wind projects in the United States. The company will instead redirect that capital into American oil, natural gas, and LNG projects.
This is not corporate welfare. It is a refund of money already paid, exchanged for killing two expensive, unreliable projects before they could burden American ratepayers. And TotalEnergies agreed to keep the money in the U.S. and use it for oil and natural gas. The headline should have read,
“Win-Win — Trump gets French company TotalEnergies to invest a billion dollars on reliable, affordable American energy instead of offshore wind.”
https://www.cfact.org/2026/04/03/trumps-billion-dollar-giveaway-actually-a-refund-to-kill-costly-offshore-wind/
