Why Trump Needed to Declare a National Energy Emergency – Watts Up With That?

By Brian Morgenstern Sam Lyman

Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. The October 7 terrorist attack in Israel. Sky-high inflation. The crushing price of groceries and other consumer goods. Pain at the pump.

One throughline connects some of the greatest failures of the Biden presidency: bad energy policy.

To right the wrongs of his predecessor, President Donald Trump took the unprecedented step of declaring a national energy emergency on his first day in office. In his inauguration speech, Trump vowed to “bring prices down, fill our strategic reserves up again right to the top, and export American energy all over the world.” In contrast to the national malaise of the Biden years, Trump’s ambitious energy agenda promises a new morning in America. His commitment to “energy dominance” will subdue our enemies, tame the tiger of inflation, and usher in a new era of tech supremacy.

To understand why Trump declared a national energy emergency, it is first critical to understand where Biden failed on this issue. Consider the human toll of Biden’s energy policy in three arenas: Ukraine, Israel, and Mainstreet America.

Putin’s war on Ukraine was boosted by Biden’s own war on U.S. oil producers.

In the first year of his presidency, Biden kneecapped domestic LNG production by blocking new oil and gas leases on federal lands, canceling the Keystone XL Pipeline, and imposing impossible standards on domestic fossil fuel producers. As a result, U.S. crude oil production remained woefully behind pre-pandemic levels for the first year of Biden’s presidency—to the tune of approximately one million fewer barrels of oil per day.

Cheering on Biden’s restrictions just as much as the environmental lobby was Russian President Vladimir Putin. As the U.S. retreated from global oil markets, Russia advanced, increasing its production by nearly nine hundred thousand barrels a day in 2021. Putin’s ability to eat into the U.S. market share in the energy sector put Russia on strong economic footing in the leadup to its invasion of Ukraine.  

After the invasion, the high price of oil fueled Russia’s war machine, kept its economy alive, and shored up its currency in the most critical years of the Ukraine conflict. Biden could have undermined Russia’s military campaign and decreased global oil prices simply by removing his restrictions on U.S. producers, allowing them to drill to their full capacity. But he refused and exacerbated the problem in 2024 by pausing new LNG exports to European allies. Thousands of innocent Ukrainians suffered as a result of Biden’s energy policies.

Sadly, Biden’s war on U.S. oil producers not only strengthened Russia—it also empowered Iran and endangered Israel.

Like Russia, Iran was able to capture a significant portion of the global oil market share that would have otherwise gone to the U.S. were it not for Biden’s harmful regulations. And like Russia, Iran was able to leverage this oil revenue to launch its own war. Using Hamas as its proxy, the Iranian regime engineered the October 7 terrorist attack against Israel, sparking one of the bloodiest conflicts in the region’s history.

From Europe to the Middle East, Biden’s disastrous energy policies made the world a more dangerous place. They also made it more expensive.

Mainstreet America was just another casualty in Biden’s war on oil. Everyday citizens foot the bill for this war in the form of high inflation, which reached a peak of over 9% in 2022 and caused the dollar to lose over 22% of its purchasing power in only four years. Exacerbating the highest inflation our country has seen in a generation were rising energy prices that resulted from the Biden administration’s attempts to curb fossil fuel production in favor of renewable energy.

Seeing the damage wrought by his predecessor’s energy policies—both here at home and abroad—Trump had no choice but to declare a national energy emergency. Thankfully, the new president understands what the former never did: Energy is the base layer of all matter, life, and human activity. Or, as Einstein put it, E = mc².

As the fundamental currency of the universe, countries rise and fall on their ability to maximize energy production. And any attempt to manipulate the supply-and-demand dynamics that govern its use leads to distortions—not only in global markets but in monetary systems and international politics as well.

Trump intuits this. Which is why “Drill, baby, drill!”—beyond being a catchy slogan—is a promising, first-principles approach to getting our country back on track.

The logic is simple: Biden’s policies hurt energy providers here at home while enriching our enemies abroad. These policies drove up the price of energy and inflation in our country, making all Americans poorer. And they made electricity harder to acquire than ever before just when critical emerging industries in tech and transportation needed it most.

That’s why, as part of his national energy emergency, President Trump must revoke Biden-era energy regulations. Every last one.

The economy of the future—including Bitcoin and AI data centers, electric vehicles, commercial space exploration, and quantum computing—will require far more energy than we are producing today. According to research from S&P Global, electricity demand from U.S. data centers alone is expected to more than double over the next decade, increasing from 185 TWh to 440 TWh. Failing to meet this demand would give China the edge in the race for artificial intelligence, putting both our economy and our national security at risk.

Given the challenges facing our nation, securing energy dominance is the only option.

If the U.S. is to succeed in weakening its enemies, wrangling inflation, spurring GDP growth, and onshoring manufacturing, then it needs to use its God-given energy assets. This includes nuclear, hydro, solar, and yes, fossil fuels.

Almost no clean energy project would succeed without the manufacturing and infrastructure that fossil fuels make possible. Case in point: Texas.

Policymakers in the Lonestar State recognized long ago that oil and natural gas were critical companions in scaling up renewable energy. So in contrast to California, Texas lawmakers opted to encourage fossil fuel production, rather than restrict it. This decision has resulted in more—not less—renewable energy generation overall and the cleanest energy mix in the country. Our country’s leaders should embrace this all-of-the-above approach to energy production.

For the last four years under Biden, the federal government’s foot has been on the brake pad of energy generation. Trump must move it to the accelerator—because cheap and abundant power is the key to a safer world, lower inflation, better tech, and a stronger economy.

Brian Morgenstern is head of public policy for Riot Platforms and served as White House deputy communications director and deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury during the first Trump administration.

Sam Lyman is director of public policy for Riot Platforms and served as chief speechwriter to United States Senator Orrin Hatch.

This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.