Donald Trump, the final candidate in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, made some big promises Thursday evening to West Virginia coal miners who will head to the polls Tuesday for their state’s primary election. “I’m thinking about the miners all over this country. We’re going to put the miners back to work,” Trump said. “We’re going to get those mines open.”
As has been Trump’s standard practice throughout his campaign, he did not provide any details as to how he would reopen the mines, but nonetheless told miners in the audience, “you can count on it. You can count on it 100 percent.”
Coal miners are a relatively small group, according to May 2015 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics there were less than 70,000 coal miners in the nation. That number decreased annually by about 5,000 in the four years prior. Industry-wide, a July 2015 study estimated that from 2008-2012 the coal industry lost nearly 50,000 workers.
The billionaire businessman called out Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, who ran into some trouble in early March after suggesting that her energy policy, which relies heavily on expanding use of renewable energy, would put many miners out of work. “See, I’m going to put the miners back to work, and she said ‘I’m going to put the miners and the mines out of business,’” Trump said.
Clinton did say her plan would “put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.” But the rest of her message – “We’re going to make it clear that we don’t want to forget those people. Those people labored in those mines for generations, losing their health, often losing their lives to turn on our lights and power our factories.” – was lost in much of the backlash, as it was in Trump’s Thursday address.
Clinton returned to Ohio last week, after winning the primary weeks before, to again try to clarify her statement. The former senator and secretary of state has focused her message to coal country on the revitalization of communities in the region, in contrast to Trump’s-industry centered message.
“At a time when our energy sector is changing rapidly, we need to invest in coal communities. We need to figure out how to bring new jobs and industries to them,” she said.
Clinton also made sure to note existing energy market trends, as low-cost natural gas has played a significant role in the downturn of the coal industry. “The facts are clear: The energy market is changing here in America and around the world, but coal is still part of our energy supply although it produces far less of our electricity than it once did. Even China is starting to burn less coal. That’s good for the planet, but it has hurt American coal exports from this region,” she said.
The U.S. electric power industry’s use of steam coal for electricity production dropped 29 percent from a high of 1,045 million short tons in 2007 to about 739 million short tons in 2015, according to recent findings by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
Trump did not mention how he intends to increase coal production in light of the market’s support for natural gas, nor did he mention natural gas at all during his campaign stop.
Trump did mention China’s coal use, a common topic of his campaign. “The one place where we’re selling coal is China. So China can use the coal, but we can’t. You explain that one. China can use it,” Trump said.
China’s coal imports have declined in recent years due to “rising output from domestic mines, improvements in coal transportation infrastructure, and slower growth in domestic coal demand,” as well as the introduction of various regulatory measures in 2014 and 2015, according to the EIA.
