Trump has put the US energy grid on a war footing! And these 5 companies stand to benefit the most…

On April 20, President Trump did something that hasn’t been done since the Cold War era: he invoked the Defence Production Act to declare America’s energy grid a matter of national defence.

This isn’t a press release or a campaign promise. It’s a legal determination published in the Federal Register, signed under wartime powers first enacted in 1950, that formally classifies transformers, transmission lines, substations, high-voltage circuit breakers, and grid-supporting supply chains as essential to national security.

The immediate trigger is the Iran war and surging energy prices. But the underlying problem it’s addressing has been building for years, and for investors who understand what this order does, the opportunity is significant.

Why the energy grid became a national security problem

America’s electric grid is old. Much of it was built in the 1950s and 60s. The average large power transformer in service today is over 40 years old, and lead times to replace one now stretch between two and three years – largely because the US no longer manufactures most of them domestically. South Korea, Germany, and increasingly China build the components America’s grid depends on.

The White House determination is blunt about the problem: the nation’s capacity to design, produce, and deploy large-scale grid infrastructure is “dangerously limited”.
Supply chains face long production lead times and an overreliance on imported equipment, leaving the US vulnerable in the event of war, disaster, or economic disruption.

That vulnerability isn’t theoretical. A cyberattack or physical strike on a handful of high-voltage transformers could plunge large portions of the country into darkness for months. The Iran conflict – and the broader lesson it’s delivered about energy supply chain fragility – has made the administration’s urgency palpable.

What the Defence Production Act actually does

The DPA is a powerful tool. Invoked under Section 303, it allows the Department of Energy to make direct purchases, provide financial support for new production facilities, issue priority ratings that put US government orders ahead of private customers, and cut through regulatory red tape that would normally slow infrastructure development by years.

In practical terms, it means federal money can now flow directly to companies building transformers, conductors, substations, and high-voltage equipment on US soil – and that domestic manufacturers can be guaranteed government contracts, de-risking the capital investment required to build new production capacity.

Alongside the grid determination, Trump signed parallel memorandums covering natural gas transmission, LNG capacity, coal supply chains, and domestic petroleum production.

The scale of the ambition is significant.

The problem that existed long before

The Iran war accelerated this decision, but the grid crisis is structural. Three forces have been quietly building for years.
First, AI data centres are consuming electricity at a pace the existing grid cannot support. Every major technology company – Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta – is racing to build new data centre capacity, and each new facility requires enormous amounts of power. Grid upgrades that were planned over decades now need to happen in years.

Second, the electrification of transport and heating is adding demand that the grid wasn’t built to handle. EVs, heat pumps, and industrial electrification are all drawing more power from a system designed for a different era.

Third, the existing infrastructure is simply wearing out. Lead times for critical grid components have stretched to two to three years in some cases meaning that even with money available, the physical bottleneck is severe.

The DPA determination doesn’t instantly fix those lead times. But it removes the financial and regulatory barriers that have prevented domestic manufacturers from investing in new capacity. That’s the first step in a multi-year buildout.

So, who wins?

The order is remarkably specific about which components matter. That specificity maps directly onto investable companies.
#1: Quanta Services (NYSE: PWR) is one of the largest electrical infrastructure contractors in the US, specialising in transmission line construction and grid modernisation. Transmission buildout is explicitly named in the DPA determination. It’s also a stock we hold in the South African Investor portfolio.

#2: Eaton Corporation (NYSE: ETN) manufactures circuit breakers, switchgear, and power management systems – several of which are named directly in the White House order.

#3: GE Vernova (NYSE: GEV) makes grid equipment including transformers, one of the most acute shortage items in the entire supply chain.

#4: Siemens Energy (OTC: SMERY) is a global leader in grid and energy infrastructure technology, with significant US operations.

#5: Vertiv Holdings (NYSE: VRT) provides power and cooling solutions critical for data centres – the single largest new source of grid demand driving this entire buildout.

Beyond the equipment makers, copper is the raw material running through all of it. Every transmission line, every transformer winding, every substation busbar requires copper. A sustained grid buildout is one of the most structurally bullish signals possible for copper demand, which is already under pressure from the sulphuric acid shortage we recently covered in MoneyMorning.

Simply put – the companies that make transformers, transmission lines, circuit breakers, substations, and grid electronics are now explicitly backed by the US government. For investors looking for durable, policy-supported exposure in a volatile market, this is one of the clearest signals of the year.