Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Declares a National Emergency to Secure America’s Bulk-Power System

[u/tetaniclemur]

https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2026/08/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-declares-a-national-emergency-to-secure-americas-bulk-power-system/

[u/Old_Prospect]

Also an Engineer, what you said is correct.

Just want to add that I worked a booth at the IEEE conference in Chicago and it was basically filled with Chinese transformer manufacturers, American Utilities, and American Data Center companies.

The takeaway was that the datacenter companies and utilities can’t wait 5 years for an American transformer…its too big of a schedule impact and makes obtaining permits very difficult and financially risky.

[u/ChiLolla28 → u/Old_Prospect]

I have read that if we get hit with another massive solar flare like we did with the Carrington Event, and it knocks out all these major transformer hubs in the electrical grids, we would have no way to fix / replace them as there is already a backlog / not enough or no redundancies and they are very complicated and take years to create.

[u/Decision_Original → u/ChiLolla28]

That’s not entirely accurate and also why GMD (geomagnetic disturbance) studies are required on extra high voltage (ehv) transformers to determine if this transformers would be impacted by a GMD event, and if they would be impacted, put monitoring or mitigation on them to protect them from such an event.

My rudimentary understanding is that transformers located in areas with poor grounding conditions (rocky soil) and transformers built with a specific design no longer really used are the ones that typically require mitigation.  You are correct though the that without this there are likely 100’s of ehv power transformers that could be impacted in a wide spread GMD event.  

[u/PunkinPopsum → u/Old_Prospect]

Realistically speaking, what would it take to build the facilities to start creating more of these domestically? The supposed intent here is to somehow jumpstart new companies/factories to be made to fulfill demand, but obviously the real world simply doesn't work that way. Would it require a government subsidy or something?

[u/Old_Prospect → u/PunkinPopsum]

IMO it’s a waste of government resources to subsidize this. The money should be spent expanding other industries. Maybe construction/welding/electricians to actually install the procured equipment? This would improve America’s infrastructure.

Spending tax payer dollars to subsidize manufacturing plants here is a waste (again, IMO) because it’s less about cost and more about time. And what are we even building? The Chinese plants source materials globally as well. So if we copy/pasted the Chinese factories into the US, the sub components are going to still be tariffed.

Additionally, labor costs here would make the end product much more expensive such that it wouldn’t be competitive anyways.

If we are looking into manufacturing “quality”, the Chinese transformers work well enough.

[u/PunkinPopsum → u/Old_Prospect]

Thanks for your input. Yeah, it seems like such a short sighted attempt at... well, honestly, I don't really get what the goal of this one is, even if it's just propaganda. It doesn't really make sense on any level.