Trump promised things (JOBS) he cannot control ... the MARKET for coal. Even the Chinese have figured this out. US regulations (MORE pollution etc) are moving backwards, while Chinese are shooting for zero emissions energy. Yep ... USA headed in wrong direction. Politicing and head-in-the-sand ideology is NOT going to change reality.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/coal-exports-fall_us_58c993d9e4b0be71dcf104b1
Nowhere are those changes more pivotal than China, the world’s biggest polluter. Years of burning stupendous amounts of coal have shrouded its cities in thick veils of smog, and the country has dramatically scaled back its coal use since consumption peaked in 2013. Chinese demand for coal fell by about 3 percent in 2014, and dropped another 4 percent to 5 percent throughout 2015, according to the Sightline Institute, a think tank. By 2016, coal consumption dipped by 4.7 percent year over year, and the share of the country’s energy mix fell by 2 percent to 62 percent, the National Bureau of Statistics of China reported.
Steel production, the primary driver of China’s import craze, also continues to slump. A subsidiary of China National Coal Group, the third-largest coal mining company in the world, recently announced plans to lay off 4,000 workers by the end of the year.
That’s a major problem for the coal industry. As U.S. coal producers lost domestic market share to natural gas, which emits roughly half as many the greenhouse gases, they bet big on the continued growth of Chinese consumption. But, in January, China canceled 103 new coal-fired power stations ― worth 120 gigawatts of capacity ― as part of its shift toward zero-emissions energy. The country plans to spend at least $380 billion on renewables by 2020.
The U.S. coal industry basically imploded as Chinese demand slipped. Peabody Energy, Arch Coal, Alpha Natural Resources, Patriot Coal and Walter Energy have all filed for bankruptcy over the past two years. (Peabody Coal is nearing a plan to pull itself out of bankruptcy.) The number of people who work in coal has tanked, too. In 1985, the industry employed 177,000 people. At the end of 2008, that number fell to 86,000. It was at 56,000 by last year.
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