Trump to use wartime powers to dole out $700m to coal industry

US president accused of ‘putting polluters first’ by invoking Defense Production Act to prop up coal output

Donald Trump is to use a wartime presidential authority to hand $700m to coal-fired power plants in the US, the latest move by the president to bolster what he calls “beautiful clean coal” despite it being the dirtiest of fossil fuels.

Trump is using the Defense Production Act, a cold war-era statute used to accelerate American industrial output in times of national need, to provide grants to more than a dozen existing coal plants across the US, including facilities capable of exporting coal.