When Donald J. Trump returned to the White House on January 20, 2025, he inherited a shattered energy policy—and a nation paying the price for four years of willful decline.
The American energy sector, which had once been the envy of the world, was left throttled by bureaucracy, sabotaged by ideology, and entangled in a geopolitical trap of our own making.
The good news? The war on American energy is over.
The bad news? The damage is already global.
Even worse? American citizens—particularly working-class families and those on fixed incomes—were the immediate victims of President Biden’s failed energy strategies, if you can call them strategies at all.
No decision better captures the recklessness of the Biden presidency than the now-infamous LNG export freeze. This move did more to finance Vladimir Putin’s war machine than a year of Siberian oil exports—by halting new LNG terminal approvals, Biden handed Moscow an open lane to energy ascendancy.
In December 2023, over 87% of U.S. LNG exports were directed to the European Union, United Kingdom, and Asian markets, pivotal in reducing European natural gas prices by more than 83% from their 2022 peaks following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
During the Russo-Ukrainian war, the former administration’s indefinite pause disrupted global energy markets and bewildered America’s European allies striving to eliminate their dependence on Russian natural gas.
European nations—desperate for stable gas supplies, particularly in the depths of winter—were forced to fall back on Russian fuel.
The result: a direct blow to transatlantic efforts to diversify energy imports and a weakening of Europe’s collective resolve against Russian aggression.
In short, the Biden administration’s stupefying miscalculation didn’t just undermine U.S. allies—it helped feed the Russian war machine.
Europe paid Putin for the privilege—while turning to the United States for military protection from the very threat they were funding. It was a strategic absurdity that only the climate-obsessed left could defend.
The Biden Years: Ideology Over Strategy
Biden entered office under the delusion that energy is a moral problem to be solved, not a strategic asset to be wielded. He campaigned on phasing out fossil fuels and governed like a man determined to prove it.
- He killed Keystone XL on Day One of his administration, sacrificing thousands of jobs to appease eco-activists who neither drill nor deliver stable energy sources.
- He gutted federal leasing, cutting off access to vast domestic reserves.
- He weaponized the Environmental Protection Agency, throttling permits and delaying infrastructure at every turn.
He also froze LNG export approvals, a gift-wrapped concession to America’s enemies disguised as a climate virtue signal.
The consequences were not confined to the pump. Inflation surged. Blackouts rolled through blue—and sometimes even red—states. American families paid more to heat their homes, fill their tanks, and cook their meals, while Chinese coal plants roared and Russian coffers swelled.
Biden didn’t just shrink America’s energy economy; he shrank its global influence, jeopardizing both American energy security and national security.
The Trump Reversal: Energy as a Weapon of Peace
Within days of returning to office, President Trump signed an executive order lifting the export freeze, greenlighting pending LNG applications, and signaling to the world that the era of energy appeasement is over.
It was the first step in a broader doctrine: America will produce more energy than it consumes, sell the surplus to our allies, and leave geopolitical adversaries holding the bill.
Trump understands what the permanent bureaucracy and climate aristocracy do not: energy is leverage—the kind that wins wars, shapes alliances, and determines whether nations lead or follow.
- When Europe needs gas, let them buy American.
- When Asia needs LNG, let it cross the Pacific in tankers flying the Stars and Stripes.
- When the developing world demands power, let it come from Texas and Appalachia—not Tehran or Beijing.
This is geostrategic realism that puts America’s national interests and energy sovereignty first.
Energy Is Power—And Biden Gave It Away
While the left buried American oil and gas under red tape, Russia, China, and Iran understood the stakes.
Every drilling rig shut down by Biden, every export terminal mothballed, every pipeline blocked was a strategic gift to these regimes.
The Carter Playbook—This Time, Rejected
The Biden White House resembled the Carter administration in more ways than one. Both viewed energy through a lens of scarcity and guilt. Both declared war on consumption. And both saw inflation, weakness, and dependency as regrettable but necessary byproducts of “doing the right thing.”
However, Trump’s second administration is no mirror of Reagan’s—it is moving faster, harder, and with a more explicit mandate.
Reagan dismantled a failed philosophy. Trump is bulldozing an ideological empire that is intertwined with the green energy sector, which is at best unreliable and at worst a clear and present danger to national primacy.
The Road to Sovereignty
Trump’s energy blueprint is as direct as it is a game-changer:
- Unleash drilling on federal lands and offshore reserves.
- Streamline permitting for refineries, pipelines, and LNG terminals.
- Expand nuclear, fast-tracking small modular reactors.
- End taxpayer subsidies for unreliable energy.
- Assert energy dominance in every diplomatic and trade negotiation.
- Reject the Paris Agreement and its unbalanced economic shackles—treaties that punish American workers while China and Russia gobble up global market share.
President Trump understands what the progressive left and its politicians refuse to grasp: No nation can afford to outsource its energy policy—not to global NGOs, not to UN technocrats, and certainly not to Beijing.
Trump’s mandate is clear: rebuild American power by restoring American energy. The tools are in place, the reserves are proven, and the moment is now.
The Choice Ahead
The left insists the future belongs to wind, solar, and sacrifice. They are wrong.
The future belongs to nations that can fuel themselves—and their allies.
It belongs to those who are self-sufficient, not tethered to transoceanic supply chains vulnerable to disruption by calculating foes.
The future belongs to America—if it reclaims what Joe Biden gave away: the right to power its economy, project its strength, and never beg for energy again.
Under President Trump, that future is no longer hypothetical. The future is now.
Charlton Allen is an attorney and former chief executive officer and chief judicial officer of the North Carolina Industrial Commission. He is founder of the Madison Center for Law & Liberty, Inc., editor of The American Salient, and host of the Modern Federalist podcast. X: @CharltonAllenNC
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