China doesn’t “have a lot of wind farms. … Very, very few.”

During a recent Cabinet meeting, President Donald Trump discussed energy policy with Energy Secretary Chris Wright. At one point, they began discussing wind energy and China.

“I have a great relationship with President Xi,” Trump said July 8. “But I asked him, how many wind farms do you have? He makes (wind energy components), but they don’t have a lot of wind farms, I’ll tell you, very, very few. And wind is tremendously expensive and is very ugly.”

Trump’s remarks came days after he signed a major tax and spending bill that, among other things, cut back policies designed to increase U.S. renewable energy, including wind power. The bill phases out tax credits for renewable energy projects that had been included in the Inflation Reduction Act, signed in 2022 by President Joe Biden.

At the July 4 bill signing at the White House, Trump riffed on what he saw as an irony — that the U.S. buys components used in wind farms from China, yet “I have never seen a wind farm in China. Why is that? Somebody check that out.”

Trump’s take on Chinese wind farms is wrong. Way wrong. China accounts for more than 44% of the world’s wind energy capacity. 

“China has installed far more wind power capacity than any other country in the world,” said Joanna Lewis, a Georgetown University energy and environment professor.

The White House did not respond to an inquiry for this article.

Wind turbines dot the coastline along a giant solar farm near Weifang in eastern China’s Shandong province on March 22, 2024. (AP)

Data from the Global Energy Monitor, a California based research group, shows that China had more than 444,000 megawatts of wind power in operation as of February 2025. That’s almost triple the 151,000 megawatts in operation in the United States, which ranked second. Germany, India, Brazil and Spain ranked third through sixth on the group’s list.

China also ranks first in the world for wind energy capacity that’s currently in the planning or construction phase.

By this metric, China isn’t as dominant — it accounts for about 22% of the world’s wind capacity in the planning or construction phase — but its edge over the U.S. is even more pronounced. China has greater than a 5-to-1 advantage over the U.S. in capacity that’s being planned or built; the U.S. ranks sixth internationally in this category, trailing Brazil, Australia, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

In a July 2024 report, the Global Energy Monitor wrote that “China is cementing its position as the global leader in renewables development,” when wind and solar are combined.

The group’s Global Wind Power Tracker found that just the one-year increase in Chinese capacity from 2023 to 2024 exceeded the total operating capacity of any country other than the United States.

Our ruling

Trump said, China doesn’t “have a lot of wind farms. … Very, very few.”

China has a lot of wind farms, ranking No. 1 globally and almost tripling what the U.S. has. China is also planning or building more wind farm capacity than any other country.

We rate the statement Pants on Fire!