Donald Trump brought this country to energy independence and low prices at the gas pumps. Joe Biden has erased that advantage and now we are again under the thumb of foreign oil producers. Stephen Moore explains the issue.
Energy independence under President Trump saved American families $2,500 annually.
Inflation under Joe Biden costs American families $3,500 annually.
— Daniel Turner (@DanielTurnerPTF) January 10, 2022
Moore: Once, during a meeting with then-presidential candidate Donald Trump inside Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York, we discussed energy policy. I told Trump that if we went all out to produce America’s abundant supply of oil, gas and coal, the United States could be energy independent in four years.
Trump looked at me from behind his desk and shook his head. “I don’t want America to be energy independent. I want America to be energy dominant.”
There are few issues where Trump and President Joe Biden have differed more broadly on policy than on energy production. Trump went full speed on fossil fuel production. He lifted drilling restrictions, especially in states such as Alaska and on federal lands in the continental states. He gave the green light to vitally needed pipelines. He blocked new extreme environmental regulations that were intended to choke off our oil and gas supplies. He recognized the shale oil and gas revolution as an unparalleled opportunity to reduce reliance on foreign oil.
The Trump energy policy was an astonishing economic success story. By January 2021, exactly a year ago and Trump’s last month in office, for the first time in nearly 50 years, the U.S. was producing more oil than we were consuming. We imported no net oil from Saudi Arabia and the OPEC cartel nations. We were also producing more oil and gas than the Russians and the Arabs. Free at last.
Biden has come into office, and after one year, we have seen a 4% surplus of domestic oil and gas production fall to a 4% oil and gas deficit. We have gone from energy independence back to energy dependence. This is because Biden has declared war on American energy.
He has killed pipelines and reversed almost all of Trump’s pro-drilling policies. In early January, Biden stopped drilling on hundreds of thousands of potentially prime oil fields in Alaska. He is obsessed with climate change, so he loves wind and solar power and electric cars that don’t use gasoline. But under even the most optimistic assumptions, we will be getting the majority of our electric power, heating oil and transportation fuels from fossil fuels for at least the next 25-30 years.
The only question is whether we will get our fossil fuels to keep the lights on and the cars running from states such as Texas, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Wyoming, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio, or whether we will get it from the Arabs, the Russians, the Iranians and the Mexicans. Since the U.S. has much stricter environmental standards than these other oil-producing nations, any move to lower U.S. production and import the fuels from abroad adds to greenhouse gas emissions. It’s lousy economics, a danger to our national security, and isn’t even green.
The economic cost of moving away from energy independence is already about a $1 billion loss of economic output each week and about $50 billion a year down the drain.
What is worst of all (and a pitiful and embarrassing turn of events) now that oil production has fallen due to Biden edicts, this president goes to the Saudis and the OPEC nations and begs them to increase their output. It is a black eye for America. It makes us look weak, and it has made us weaker.
Join the Discussion
COMMENTS POLICY: We have no tolerance for messages of violence, racism, vulgarity, obscenity or other such discourteous behavior. Thank you for contributing to a respectful and useful online dialogue.
Reopen pipelines NOW for Our side
“Biden squanders” is true of energy independence, national security, military leadership, and loads of borrowed cash. A great headline for a disgusting and embarrassing Presidency.
It was enough to NOT vote for this man because we knew he was as corrupt as any politician ever before election day – unlike the reputation he had fostered for over 40 years! Given that, we get what we deserved, although I, at least, could never have dreamed/imagined that he would – in ONE YEAR – be like a wrecking ball swinging through the country pretty much at every level. Absolute destruction by a supposed, at least, loyal American!!
It is all of you Communistic Socialistic Progressive Liberal Democratic Donkey Party’s Supporters Fault, Who Blindly Voted For This Ignorant And Delusional Ingrate Of A Questionable #46 And His Infamously Filthy Rich And Power Hungry Administration, Who LOVES RAISING “We The Legal Citizens/People And Legal Immigrants Of The USA’s TAXES, So They Can Steal All Of Our Hard Earned Tax Dollars And Illegally Give It All Away To Those Illegal Foreign Aliens And That Nut-job Of A Dr. Fauci, Who Loves To Depopulate The USA By Illegally Funding That Gain Of Function Of The Chinese Virus, And For Actually Cutting The Vocal Cords Of Those Beautiful Beagle Puppies, So dr. Fauci Will NOT Have To Hear All Of Those Beautiful Beagle Puppies YELPS, When Those Vicious Sand Fleas Eating Them Alive!!!
He’s a complete ASS! With energy independence, we would be in a much stronger position relative to Russia, China, and Iran. I’d call his actions anti-American because they DO harm the country.
I’d call him a putz but that would be an insult to Yiddish.