Trump Declares National Emergency Over Foreign-Made Equipment in the Power Grid

President Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday, August 26, declaring a national emergency to protect the U.S. bulk-power system from foreign-made equipment, according to a White House fact sheet. The order targets transformers, generators, inverters and the software that runs them.

The concern is straightforward. This equipment can carry hidden communication devices or backdoors that let a foreign government access it remotely, according to the executive order text cited by CyberScoop. The order calls this an "unusual and extraordinary" threat, the legal language needed to invoke emergency powers without waiting on Congress.

What the order actually does

The order prohibits "any acquisition, importation, transfer, or installation" of foreign-produced bulk-power equipment determined to pose a significant national security risk, per the White House fact sheet reported by CyberScoop. It does not ban every foreign part touching American electricity.

Crypto Briefing reported the order applies specifically to the bulk-power system, the large-scale generation and transmission infrastructure that moves electricity across states and regions. Local distribution networks, the wires that run to individual homes, are explicitly excluded, according to both Crypto Briefing and the Epoch Times.

The Department of Energy has 120 days to write implementing rules. The Energy Secretary gets authority to evaluate equipment already installed and order fixes ranging from software patches to full hardware replacement, according to CyberScoop.

The China numbers

China controls roughly 80% of global solar and battery inverter manufacturing capacity, according to International Energy Agency data cited by Crypto Briefing. CyberScoop, citing International Energy Agency figures, put China's share of solar supply chain production at 85% and noted China is also a major player in transformer manufacturing.

Nearly every utility-scale solar project in the country has some exposure to Chinese-made components. This is the basic supply chain reality driving this order.

Why now

This isn't the first time Washington has tried this. Trump signed a similar executive order in his first term, in 2020, flagging bulk-power vulnerabilities. The Biden administration suspended that order to review its scope and later revoked and replaced a related Energy Department directive, according to CyberScoop. Utilities found compliance with the original order difficult even before it got shelved.

Trump revived the emergency declaration in January 2025. In July 2026, the FCC added foreign power inverters to its "Covered List," restricting their use in federally funded projects, according to Crypto Briefing.

The immediate trigger appears to be a string of incidents. CISA reported last month that more than 100 water and wastewater systems were hit through programmable logic controllers, with attackers disabling shutdown alarms, according to the Epoch Times. Reports of rogue communication devices found inside solar inverters have also circulated among national security officials, Crypto Briefing reported.

Sens. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) wrote to the Commerce Department last year saying they were "alarmed by recent reports indicating that Communist China has already compromised the integrity of power inverters connecting our power grid," warning the parts "allow for remote access, unauthorized data exfiltration, and even operational disruption," according to the Epoch Times.

Cybersecurity researcher Erika Langerová of the Czech Technical University in Prague wrote in 2025 that China has run simulations to find the minimal cost needed to trigger a large-scale grid collapse, and that "what amplifies this threat even further is how deeply Western energy infrastructure is being built on Chinese-made technologies," per the Epoch Times.

The cost problem nobody's glossing over

Even Crypto Briefing, hardly a national-security alarmist outlet, was blunt that compliance "will not be cheap or quick." Transformers are custom-built, weigh hundreds of tons, and take years to manufacture domestically. Ripping out and replacing equipment already embedded in the grid is a multi-year, multi-billion-dollar undertaking, not a software update.

The security case is real: an adversary with remote access to grid hardware is a legitimate threat, and China's dominance of inverter and transformer manufacturing isn't in dispute in any of the reporting here. But utilities will bear the cost of finding alternative suppliers that may not exist at scale, and consumers likely eat some of that bill through rates.

Fox News framed this as one piece of a broader hardening effort, arguing the U.S. also needs domestic-only component mandates, grid hardening against cyberattack, and defenses against electromagnetic attacks, on top of what this order does.

The order does not specify how the government will identify domestic or allied replacement suppliers, or whether Chinese-made equipment already operating without incident will be presumed guilty and require expensive audits. Those details fall to the Energy Department's 120-day rulemaking window, which runs into late December 2026.