If solar truly is the cheapest, why does it need any help from any government? It would seem to me that it should flourish in any capitalist society where money naturally flows towards the cheapest solution that actually works.
The question is: how early do you retire existing thermal power plant?
But the Trump admin is also with-holding permits and cancelling long distance transmission that would allow it to reach non-local markets. The fossil fuel industry is also sponsoring astro-turf campaigns on the local level to ban new deployments.
With-holding permits is stupid, as are bans on new deployments, but neither are subsidies. You can cut subsidies to zero and at the same time give out all the permits people requests.
Trump has his thumb on the scales, cancelling wind farms in progress via executive order, not cancelling the federal subsidies for fossil fuels, etc.
There are always transition overheads to breach - in China the government there subsidised the non existant EV industry into being, now that's going gang busters the government support has dropped back to near zero.
He is going to pay them $1B to drop their plans: https://www.npr.org/2026/03/23/g-s1-114868/trump-totalenergi...
Environmental groups denounced the deal as an alternate way to block wind projects, with one group calling it a "billion-dollar bribe" to kill clean energy.
"After losing again and again in court on his illegal stop-work orders, Trump has found another way to strangle offshore wind: pay them to walk away," said Lena Moffitt, executive director of Evergreen Action.