Trump’s energy policy benefits Iran and Russia, not America

President Trump’s irrational love affair with fossil fuels is doing more than polluting our environment and accelerating climate change. It is benefiting Iran and Russia, harming global security, and raising energy prices as the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran rages.

While America is now largely self-sufficient in oil and natural gas production — exporting more of the fuels than we import — prices of the fuels are set globally. That means Americans are not exempt from rising energy prices, as everyone who has visited a gas station lately knows.

Unfortunately, the war Trump and Israel launched against Iran on Feb. 28 is dramatically raising the prices people around the world are paying for the gasoline, diesel, home heating oil, natural gas and electricity we need to fuel our vehicles, power our homes and businesses, grow and harvest our food, and manufacture products.

Whether you think the war with Iran is a major blunder or a necessary action (as Trump claims), it is indisputable that the global dependence on oil and natural gas — produced in large quantities by Iran, the nearby Gulf Arab states and Russia — leaves the world dangerously vulnerable to supply disruptions from these countries.

We see this today, as Iran has halted most shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the vital waterway through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil consumption and shipments of liquefied natural gas travel.

Iran’s attacks on neighboring Arab states and continuing U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran have sharply curtailed Middle East oil and natural gas exports. Disruptions could get much worse if attacks on the oil and natural gas infrastructure on both sides of the conflict continue and the Strait of Hormuz remains closed.

Russia has benefited from the Middle East war, receiving about $150 million a day from increased sales of oil it produces. Embarrassingly, Trump has temporarily lifted some sanctions the U.S. imposed on Russian oil exports after that nation invaded Ukraine in 2022.

The sanctions relief is designed to avert global oil shortages and hold down prices, but is having the unwelcome effect of rewarding Russia yet again as it helps Iran target attacks against nearby U.S. forces and diplomatic facilities, and continues its war against Ukraine. 

The vulnerability created by global dependence on Middle East fossil fuels has been obvious for decades, most dramatically during the Arab Oil Embargo against the U.S. and several other countries that backed Israel in 1973-74. The embargo caused oil prices to quadruple and created gasoline shortages across the U.S., with long lines at gas stations and limits on fuel purchases.  

To make our country less vulnerable to Middle East and Russian fossil fuel disruptions — and to protect public health, our environment and our climate — Democratic presidents and lawmakers have been pushing for years to increase electric vehicle production and to expand solar, wind, wave, hydroelectric and in some cases nuclear power production.

President Joe Biden and Congress made remarkable progress achieving these goals. The Inflation Reduction Act that Biden signed into law in 2022 provided hundreds of billions of dollars for programs to increase the production of clean energy and electric vehicles.  

Senselessly, Trump has taken nearly 300 actions to reverse the clean energy advances instituted under the Biden administration. For example, Trump has blocked wind and solar energy projects, eliminated subsidies for electric vehicle purchases, weakened anti-pollution regulations on vehicles and the oil and gas industries, and enabled increased U.S. fossil fuel production.

Unlike most Americans, our billionaire president — who lives in the White House and travels in government planes, helicopters and SUVs at taxpayer expense — doesn’t have to worry about paying for the energy price increases he has caused.

Displaying remarkable insensitivity to the concerns of Americans about affordability, Trump has brushed off rising energy prices as a temporary inconvenience and posted on the social media site he owns: “The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money.”  

No, Mr. President, when Americans are forced to pay more for energy we don’t “make a lot of money.” When the midterm elections are held in November, most of us will remember how your foolish war has strained family budgets, cost billions of our tax dollars, and tragically claimed the lives of heroic members of our military.

In campaigning for the midterms, Democratic congressional candidates would be wise to not just oppose Trump’s unpopular war, but to call for reinstating and expanding the Biden energy policies to sharply reduce our consumption of fossil fuels.

America will undoubtedly keep producing oil and natural gas for many years. If we can cut the amount of the fuels we use, we can sell more to other nations, reducing their need to buy energy from the unstable Middle East and Russia.  

As fossil fuel prices continue to rise due to Trump’s war of choice, Democrats should campaign on a long-term goal of reducing worldwide consumption of the fuels to close to zero. This will benefit our environment, our wallets and global security, making America and other nations less vulnerable to regimes that use energy as a weapon of war.

A. Scott Bolden is an attorney, NewsNation contributor, former chair of the Washington, D.C. Democratic Party and a former New York state prosecutor. 

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