Another group of Trump voters will be disappointed

Reversing Barack Obama’s environmental and energy agenda is one of the Trump administration’s big first-year successes, alongside achievements like December’s $1.5 trillion tax overhaul. It has certainly been one of Trump's most persistent strategies, as his agencies have moved to revoke Obama’s climate and water regulations, ease limits on fracking, wipe out drilling restrictions on almost the entire U.S. coastline and postpone energy-efficiency requirements.

Now, however, the courts will have their say in how far these rollbacks go, as much of Trump’s deregulatory agenda faces legal challenges from state attorneys general and environmental groups stretching from D.C. to California.

[...]

“We already seem to have more oil than we can say grace over,” said John Northington, a former Clinton-era Interior Department official now working as an energy consultant. “I don’t think the new policies will have any impact on the market. A lot of the rulemaking they’ve proposed will be held up in courts or overturned.”

[...]

“A lot of the stuff coming out of Interior is just PR,” said Pavel Molchanov, an energy analyst with financial services firm Raymond James in Houston. “It doesn’t mean anything to drilling. Drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, it’s pure fantasy to think we’ll see that.”

[...]

U.S. coal production did rise in 2017, boosted by exports of steel-making coal. But demand is expected to drop this year as natural gas continues to take its share of the electricity market.

“If natural gas prices drop, the pace of us coal decline will accelerate,” Rhodium Group energy analyst Trevor Houser said. “This mini-recovery in coal production in 2017, the bottom will fall out from that.”

  Politico

Oh, yeah. They forgot about the courts. I think The Most Notable Loser himself probably thought he could just wiggle his short vulgarian fingers and make new laws.

More seriously, the parts of Trump’s agenda that survive may not have the deep impact that he is promising [...] as market forces continue to take a bite out of coal.

[...]

[E]xperts see little chance coal will reverse the sharp declines it has suffered in the past decade.

[...]

A last-ditch effort by the Energy Department to throw the coal industry a lifeline fell flat earlier this month when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission — a panel dominated by Trump appointees — rejected Secretary Rick Perry’s plan to offer financial support to coal-fired power plants.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.