Trump’s been tilting at windmills for years
Ed Palm
Columnist
President Trump is tilting at windmills again. As you may have heard, upon arriving in Scotland on July 25, Trump renewed his attack on windmills. 'Stop the windmills,' Trump said. 'You’re ruining your countries. You fly over and you see these windmills, ruining your beautiful fields and valleys. Killing your birds and ruining your oceans.'
(Trump also railed against immigration. No surprise there.)
I suppose no one has told Trump that Scotland gets over half its electricity from wind. Trump, however, is a diehard fossil fuels fan.
Trump first swore eternal enmity to windmills 14 years ago. He noticed that North Sea windmills were visible from his first Scottish golf course. That he could not abide. He later made fun of wind power during his campaign rallies, evoking an imaginative scenario in which a couple couldn’t watch their favorite TV program because the wind wasn’t blowing. I presume Trump knows that’s not the way it works and so do most of his followers. But just the idea of clean energy seems to be anathema to Trump. He’s all for maximizing oil company profits. The environment be damned!
As you probably already know, to tilt at windmills is a metaphor. It signifies stubbornly committing oneself to achieving an unrealistic or impossible goal. What you may not know is the origin of the phrase. It’s an allusion to a 17th-century classic work of Spanish literature, the novel 'Don Quixote' by Miguel de Cervantes.
Tilting, of course, is a jousting term meaning to charge with a lance or other weapon.
The premise of the work is that the title character has steeped himself in romantic works of chivalry to the point of madness. He actually begins to imagine himself to be a knight errant — a knight who wanders around in search of damsels in distress and other chivalrous challenges. If there ever really were knights errant, Don Quixote steps into the role long after the age of chivalry had passed. Nevertheless, he acquires a horse, armor, and a lance and sets out to do what he imagines a knight errant must do. He also recruits a skeptical peasant named Sancho Panza to be his squire.
Don Quixote’s first great adventure is to tilt at — i.e., to charge — an actual windmill he believes to be a monstrous giant. Sancho Panza tries to warn him it’s only a windmill and not a giant, but he won’t listen. As you can imagine, Don Quixote gets much the worst of the encounter. Undeterred, he believes an enchanter turned the giant into a windmill.
To my mind at least, there is an obvious parallel here. Trump is tilting at windmills with his tariff policies. The trade imbalances he obsesses over were never a problem. As I reported before, the editor of 'The Week' magazine illustrated the essential absurdity of Trump’s tariffs. He routinely buys from Amazon, yet Amazon has never bought anything from him. Is Amazon ripping him off? ('Truth, Justice, and the American Way,' April 27, 2025)
Think about all you buy from your favorite grocery store. Has that store ever bought anything from you? If not, is that store ripping you off? Trump is trying to fix something that wasn’t broken, and he is antagonizing the world in the process. And like Don Quixote, we’re getting worst of it. Make no mistake about it: Exporters don’t pay tariffs. Importers do, and they ultimately become a tax passed on to us. Think we can just refrain from buying imported goods. Think again. Many of the raw materials and parts that go into our cars, electronics, and other goods have to be imported.
I must admit, however, that I’m not sure whom to cast in the role of Trump’s Sancho Panza. Marco Rubio comes to mind — mainly for his obsequious alliance with a man who once made fun of him. But the Sancho Panza of the novel at least tries to set Don Quixote straight. I rather doubt Rubio ever challenges Trump. Who in Trump’s cabinet might fill the role? I don’t know. But this much I’m sure about: Trump is not chivalric. Look up the word and note the qualities associated with it.
(I mean it now. I’m off on vacation, not to return to these pages until August 17.)
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