September 26, 2025 — On a warm September day, Sonia Brito stood on a platform more than 200 feet high, securing a “gripper” atop a wind turbine tower with the help of a few of her millwright and ironworker brothers. It’s something they’ve done dozens of times to ready the towers to be grabbed by a crane, placed onto barges and shipped to sea.
The staging terminal, previously packed with blades, nacelles and towers for Vineyard Wind, has grown sparse, a result of a steady workflow during summer’s prime seafaring conditions — and a slowdown, workers say, of international shipments amid the Trump administration’s tariffs.
A Portuguese immigrant who grew up in New Bedford, Brito, 22, says she feels lucky to have happened upon an opportunity like Vineyard Wind. It has allowed her to work in her hometown and build a project that she thinks will have positive impacts for her city and the country’s climate future.
But since the federal government abruptly halted construction at Empire Wind for one month in the spring, and then Revolution Wind in August, workers supporting the buildout of offshore wind in New England have grown worried about the industry’s future — and theirs.