Part of the Pressure on Coal Is Coming from……Trump Himself

China is the world’s largest consumer of coal; in fact, it consumes almost as much coal as the rest of the world combined–and, in the old days, lots of it had come via imports from the U.S.  But what happened when the trade war hit? Doesn’t everything that the American master negotiator implements improve conditions for U.S. industries?

Ahem.  I’ll get back to you on that.

In any case, China’s 25% retaliatory tariff is crushing U.S. coal mining like a bug.

Coal production is falling off a cliff, even without the predictable consequences of the trade war, but this is really putting a spear through dirty energy.