Trump declares energy emergency to ban foreign grid equipment
The 2020 order tripped up utilities on compliance; the 2025 version adds an emergency declaration and a 120-day clock, with the same criteria still undefined.
TL;DR
Trump signed an executive order Wednesday declaring a national energy emergency and prohibiting foreign-produced equipment in the U.S. bulk-power system when it poses cybersecurity or operational risk. The order revives the framework of his May 2020 directive (which the Biden administration suspended) and adds broader language citing "digital backdoors." Primes, contractors, equipment vendors, and utilities face a 120-day clock for Energy Department implementing rules. The criteria that made the 2020 version difficult for utilities to comply with (what qualifies as a "significant national security risk," the scope of covered software, and the phase-in for existing installations) remain undefined.
Near the end of his first term, Trump signed an executive order barring foreign-produced equipment from the U.S. bulk-power system. The Biden administration suspended it. On Wednesday, the policy came back, this time under a declared national energy emergency and with broader language about "digital backdoors" that foreign adversaries might build into grid equipment.
The new order prohibits "any acquisition, importation, transfer, or installation" of foreign-produced bulk-power system equipment, including associated critical software, if the Energy Department determines it poses a significant national security risk. The order gives the department 120 days, in consultation with other agencies, to issue implementing rules that define what qualifies.
Here's where the 2020 version ran into trouble. Utilities reported difficulty complying, partly because supply chains for certain bulk-power equipment are concentrated in countries the restrictions target. China supplies roughly 85% of solar supply chain production capacity, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, and is a major player in power transformer manufacturing. Without clear criteria for what equipment crosses the risk threshold or a workable phase-in for gear already in the field, utilities faced an open-ended compliance problem.
The 2025 order inherits the same undefined variables. What qualifies as a "significant national security risk"? What software falls within "associated critical software"? How will existing installations be handled? None of these are answered in the order itself. The 120-day rulemaking window is where they will be, or won't be. If the Energy Department produces clear, workable criteria, the order could harden the bulk-power system against the supply-chain threats that then-FBI Director Christopher Wray described to Congress in 2024, when he warned that adversaries were prepositioning in routers with the grid in mind. If the rules arrive fuzzy, the prior pattern repeats, and compliance directors get another framework they can't operationalize.
Published ·Deep Fathom