Mark Mills

Washington, D.C., United States

Exec Director @EnergyRealities, Senior Fellow @TPPF, Contributing Editor@CityJournal, Partner, Montrose Lane. Book, THE CLOUD REVOLUTION https://t.co/RG0uZf3CQg

Articles

Blame Regulators for Holding Back U.S. Manufacturing-Not Tariffs

1 month ago | city-journal.org | Mark Mills

It may seem nearly impossible to sort the signal from the noise surrounding the current attempts to use tariffs to reshore American manufacturing. But given the stakes, it’s worth examining some underlying facts and persistent myths. Start with the most significant factor hobbling America’s once-mighty manufacturing machine: the relentless expansion of the regulatory state.
Green Energy Fallacies

2 months ago | city-journal.org | Mark Mills |Brian Anderson

Mark P. Mills joins Brian Anderson to discuss why a true energy transition is impossible. Brian Anderson: Welcome back to the 10 Blocks podcast. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal, and today we're joined by Mark Mills. We're going to discuss energy and technology and some of his recent stories for City Journal, including his most recent, which we titled will never have an energy transition.
We’ll Never Have an Energy Transition

2 months ago | city-journal.org | Mark Mills

In his March 4 address to Congress, President Trump proclaimed that he had “terminated the ridiculous Green New Scam,” referring to assorted Biden-era Green New Deal policies directed at an “energy transition.” The weekend before, the Wall Street Journal featured a lengthy essay with a title seemingly calibrated to pre-bunk Trump’s expected remarks: “The Clean Energy Revolution Is Unstoppable.” The authors, two Oxford professors, asserted that the “clean energy revolution is being driven by...
DeepSeek AI Energy Breakthrough Still Faces a Problem

Jan 29, 2025 | city-journal.org | Mark Mills

Unsurprisingly, the news that China’s DeepSeek AI had leapfrogged competitors triggered an investor sell-off. It dragged down Nvidia, the American chipmaker powering the AI revolution, as well as related tech stocks, from Micron and Advanced Micro Devices to manufacturing juggernaut TSMC. There is, after all, some wisdom in worrying that we don’t know who the ultimate winners in the AI race will be. Markets don’t always exhibit wisdom, however.
The Only “Energy Emergency” Is the One Biden Created

Jan 25, 2025 | city-journal.org | Mark Mills

President Trump’s Day One executive order declaring an “energy emergency” is political hyperbole, some say, even if they agree with the general thrust. But the energy situation does present real urgency. As for the question of the legality of the “emergency” order, we’ll have to await the inevitable challenges. Experts note that executive orders themselves are not subject to legal challenges, but the actions that flow from them can and doubtless will be.
How Trump Can Unlock America’s Energy Options

Jan 14, 2025 | city-journal.org | Mark Mills

Not since the presidency of James K. Polk, circa 1845, has a single president made such a large change as Joe Biden in the territorial scale of the United States. Polk, however, expanded America’s domain by 768 million acres, adding Texas, Oregon, and Mexico’s ceded territory, while Biden has contracted it—at least in terms of useful access—with his “sweeping” January 6 order banning oil and natural gas exploration or development on 625 million acres of offshore territory.
IRA, Meet DOGE

Dec 10, 2024 | city-journal.org | Mark Mills

It has doubtless occurred to Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, co-leaders of President-elect Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, that the quickest route to finding a big chunk of the DOGE’s promised $2 trillion in savings is the Inflation Reduction Act. The problematic features of the IRA go much deeper than the “mere” billions of dollars in green loans, electric car subsidies, grants, and giveaways that have made the news in recent months.
The Inflation Reduction Act: A Looming Political Earthquake

Nov 4, 2024 | city-journal.org | Mark Mills

If it weren’t for the election season swamping news coverage, odds are more people would be talking about the revelation that, to quote a Bloomberg headline, “The World Bank Somehow Lost Track of at Least $24 Billion.” In fact, that may understate the reality: the World Bank’s “accounting gap” could be as big as $41 billion.
The Longshoremen's Strike and the Great Inversion

Oct 8, 2024 | city-journal.org | Mark Mills

The quickly settled International Longshoremen’s Association strike takes us one more step toward the Great Inversion: a future in which people in the skilled and semi-skilled trades boast higher average wages than most college graduates. If the justification for most college degrees—only 10 percent of them in STEM fields—reduces to their boosting future earning power, then those graduates will have a problem.
The Political Cost of the Energy Transition

Sep 6, 2024 | city-journal.org | Mark Mills

For physicists, energy is about the laws of nature; for engineers, it’s about manufacturing prowess. For citizens, however, energy is generally about money. Energy purchases are unavoidable—whether directly, by paying our electric bills or for gas in our cars, or indirectly, by paying for the energy costs embedded in food, vacations, and everything else. Politicians often use “pocketbook” language when talking to voters because they know how important lowering everyday costs are for most Americans.