When President Donald Trump recently visited a Ford F-150 plant in Dearborn, Michigan, to discuss the state of America’s economy, the setting carried significance, and so did his message.
For more than 40 years, the Ford F-150 has been an iconic American product and also the best-selling vehicle in the United States. The truck sold 1.3 million units last year alone. The F-150 isn’t just a truck, it’s a symbol of American manufacturing, consumer choice, and the free market responding to demand.
It’s also a reminder of a key platform in President Trump’s agenda: ending Joe Biden’s electric-vehicle mandates. And thankfully, he did. Because when the federal government stopped bribing Americans to buy EVs, the truth surfaced fast.
Just one month after the federal EV tax credits expired last fall, electric vehicle sales cratered. Industry data showed EV purchases fell by as much as 60 percent almost overnight. Market share was cut in half. The so-called EV “transition” turned out to be a taxpayer-subsidized mirage.
Ford learned that lesson the hard way. The electric version of the F-150 — the Ford Lightning Biden billed as the future of American trucking — was canceled after consumers rejected it. Ford lost a staggering $19.5 billion on Biden’s EV dream. And it wasn’t alone. Other EV models were shelved, production lines slowed, and billions in write-downs followed. That wasn’t market failure. That was government failure exposed.
Which raises the obvious question: What could America’s automakers and manufacturers have built if Washington hadn’t forced them down Biden’s disastrous green detour?
The problem wasn’t limited to cars. Joe Biden and the eco-left poured at least $391 billion into wind and solar, again insisting they knew better than consumers, engineers, and energy producers. The result was predictable: unreliable power, electricity prices spiking by nearly 30 percent, and a grid stretched to the limit. Americans didn’t ask for it, but Joe Biden and his eco-left cohorts made sure we paid for it anyway.
The pattern never changed. When the eco-left army of bureaucrats picked “winners,” the free market lost. Imagine if you were an engineer in coal, natural gas, oil, or nuclear watching as funding dried up in favor of wind and solar. Survival would be the goal. The result was that innovation stalled everywhere outside the politically favored lanes.
Let’s be clear: The best outcome would have been avoiding Biden’s green autopen detour. However, the second-best outcome is the current trajectory: letting companies that understand their industries compete, innovate, and invest without government coercion.
The clearest recent example comes from the tech sector. META just made a massive move on nuclear energy to power its AI future — committing to 6.6 gigawatts of nuclear electricity. For perspective, the SunZia project in New Mexico bills itself as “largest clean energy infrastructure project in United States history.” It will generate less than half the power META just committed to in nuclear. And as a bonus: it will produce energy even when the wind doesn’t blow.
META’s investment is not a symbolic gesture. It is industrial-scale realism.
America is in a global AI race, a race fueled by electricity — reliable, affordable, around-the-clock power. META understands this. Nuclear provides it. And notably, nuclear has never been a darling of the eco-left. That’s precisely the point.
This is what innovation looks like when government steps back. Companies make decisions based on physics, economics, and reality, not political trends.
The Trump administration understands this as well. Since taking office, Energy Secretary Chris Wright has repeatedly pointed to next-generation nuclear as a critical part of American energy dominance. That’s an energy policy built around abundance, not restriction. As a bonus, the nuclear engineer who had to sit on the sidelines while Joe Biden tried to put them out of a job is now free to innovate.
The lesson should be obvious by now. Just like the failed EV push and the energy reality blackout, when Washington, D.C. picks winners and losers, innovation loses. Markets distort. Prices rise. Progress stalls.
But if META’s nuclear investment is any indication, America is back on the right road. And thankfully, reality is finally back behind the wheel.
Larry Behrens is an energy expert and the Communications Director for Power The Future. He is also author of the new book Power Restored: President Trump’s First Year and the Revival of American Energy Leadership. He has appeared on Fox News, ZeroHedge, and NewsMax speaking in defense of American energy workers. You can follow him on X/Twitter @larrybehrens.
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