Trump fact-checked: China sells windmills to ‘stupid people’?

Donald Trump has falsely claimed China makes windmills but doesn’t use wind energy.  “ They sell them to the stupid people that buy them,” the US president said while addressing the World Economic Forum on Wednesday, 21 January. In reality, China is one of the world’s largest users of wind power. As of 2024, around 16% of China’s electricity generation came from wind energy alone, according to the Environmental Impact Assessment. Trump also dismissed renewable energy as “the greatest hoax in history,” telling the crowd that windmills “destroy your land.” But the facts tell a different story: China uses roughly twice as much wind energy as the United States or the European Union, according to Ember.