Trump’s Energy Speech: Strong Free Market Directions

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 1, 2016

“And if Crooked Hillary can shut down the mines, she can shut down your business too.”

“These actions have denied millions of Americans access to the energy wealth sitting under our feet. This is your treasure, and you – the American People – are entitled to share in the riches.”

“We’re going to rescind all the job-destroying Obama executive actions including the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the U.S. rule.”

On May 26, Donald Trump gave his first major energy speech. It advocates a rollback of the energy statism of President Obama, which would continue under Hillary Clinton (but not Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party nominee for President).

There is much to like in Trump’s agenda, and nothing better than calling the bluff of the climate alarmists who profess to want to save the climate but have a variety of other agendas at work. The emperor is truly wearing no clothes in the climate tiff.

His energy speech follows. I offer some minor criticisms at the end.

An America First Energy Plan

I’m delighted to be in North Dakota, a state at the forefront of a new energy revolution.

Oil and natural gas production is up significantly in the last decade. Our oil imports have been cut in half. But all this occurred in spite of massive new bureaucratic and political barriers. President Obama has done everything he can to get in the way of American energy. He’s made life much more difficult for North Dakota, as costly regulation makes it harder and harder to turn a profit.

If Hillary Clinton is in charge, things will get much worse. She will shut down energy production across this country. Millions of jobs, and trillions of dollars of wealth, will be destroyed as a result. That is why our choice this November is so crucial.

Here’s what it comes down to. Wealth versus poverty. North Dakota shows how energy exploration creates shared prosperity. Better schools. More funding for infrastructure. Higher wages. Lower unemployment. Things we’ve been missing.

It’s a choice between sharing in this great energy wealth, or sharing in the poverty promised by Hillary Clinton.

You don’t have to take my word for it. Just listen to Hillary Clinton’s own words. She has declared war on the American worker. Here is what Hillary Clinton said earlier this year: “We are going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of work.” She wants to shut down the coal mines.

And if Crooked Hillary can shut down the mines, she can shut down your business too.

Let me tell you how President Obama Undermined Our Middle Class

President Obama’s stated intent is to eliminate oil and natural gas production in America.

His policy is death by a thousand cuts through an onslaught of regulations. The Environmental Protection Agency’s use of totalitarian tactics forces energy operators in North Dakota into paying unprecedented multi-billion dollar fines before a penalty is even confirmed.

Government misconduct goes on and on:

• The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against seven North Dakota oil companies for the deaths of 28 birds while the Administration fast-tracked wind projects that kill more than 1 million birds a year.
• The U.S Fish and Wildlife Service abuses the Endangered Species Act to restrict oil and gas exploration.
• Adding to the pain, President Obama now proposes a $10-per-barrel tax on American-produced oil in the middle of a downturn.At the same time President Obama lifts economic sanctions on Iran, he imposes economic sanctions on America. He has allowed this country to hit the lowest oil rig count since 1999, producing thousands of layoffs.

America’s incredible energy potential remains untapped. It is a totally self-inflicted wound.

Under my presidency, we will accomplish complete American energy independence. Imagine a world in which our foes, and the oil cartels, can no longer use energy as a weapon. But President Obama has done everything he can to keep us dependent on others.

Let me list some of the good energy projects he killed.

He rejected the Keystone XL Pipeline despite the fact that:

• It would create and support more than 42,000 jobs.
• His own State Department concluded that it would be the safest pipeline ever built in the United States.
• And it would have no significant impact on the environment.
• Yet, even as he rejected this America-Canada pipeline, he made a deal that allows Iran to transport more oil through its pipeline that would have ever flowed through Keystone –with no environmental review.
  President Obama has done everything he can to kill the coal industry. Here are a few of President Obama’s decrees:

Regulations that shut down hundreds of coal-fired power plants and block the construction of new ones. A prohibition against coal production on federal land. Draconian climate rules that, unless stopped, would effectively bypass Congress to impose job-killing cap-and-trade.

President Obama has aggressively blocked the production of oil & natural gas:

• He’s taken a huge percentage of the Alaska National Petroleum Reserve off the table
• Oil and natural gas production on federal lands is down 10%.
• 87% of available land in the Outer Continental Shelf has been put off limits.
• Atlantic Lease sales were closed down too – despite the fact that they would create 280,000 jobs and $23.5 billion in economic activity.
• President Obama entered the United States into the Paris Climate Accords – unilaterally, and without the permission of Congress. This agreement gives foreign bureaucrats control over how much energy we use right here in America.

These actions have denied millions of Americans access to the energy wealth sitting under our feet. This is your treasure, and you – the American People – are entitled to share in the riches. President Obama’s anti-energy orders have also weakened our security, by keeping us reliant on foreign sources of energy. Every dollar of energy we don’t explore here, is a dollar of energy that makes someone else rich over there. If President Obama wanted to weaken America he couldn’t have done a better job.

As bad as President Obama is, Hillary Clinton will be worse.

• She will escalate the war against American energy, and unleash the EPA to control every aspect of our lives.
• She declared that “we’ve got to move away from coal and all the other fossil fuels,” locking away trillions in American wealth.
• In March, Hillary Clinton said: “by the time we get through all of my conditions, I do not think there will be many places in America where fracking will continue to take place.” Keep in mind, shale energy production could add 2 million jobs in 7 years.

Yet, while Hillary Clinton doesn’t want American energy, she is strongly in favor of foreign energy. Here is what she told China as Secretary of State:

• “American experts and Chinese experts will work to develop China’s natural gas resources. Imagine what it would mean for China if China unleashed its own natural gas resources so you are not dependent on foreign oil.”

Hillary Clinton has her priorities wrong. But we are going to turn all of that around.

 A Trump Administration will develop an America First energy plan. Here is how this plan will make America Wealthy Again:

• American energy dominance will be declared a strategic economic and foreign policy goal of the United States.
• America has 1.5 times as much oil as the combined proven resources of all OPEC countries; we have more Natural Gas than Russia, Iran, Qatar and Saudi Arabia Combined; we have three times more coal than Russia. Our total untapped oil and gas reserves on federal lands equal an estimated $50 trillion.
• We will become, and stay, totally independent of any need to import energy from the OPEC cartel or any nations hostile to our interests.
• At the same time, we will work with our Gulf allies to develop a positive energy relationship as part of our anti-terrorism strategy.
• We will use the revenues from energy production to rebuild our roads, schools, bridges and public infrastructure. Cheaper energy will also boost American agriculture.
• We will get the bureaucracy out of the way of innovation, so we can pursue all forms of energy. This includes renewable energies and the technologies of the future. It includes nuclear, wind and solar energy – but not to the exclusion of other energy. The government should not pick winners and losers. Instead, it should remove obstacles to exploration. Any market has ups and downs, but lifting these draconian barriers will ensure that we are no longer at the mercy of global markets.

A Trump Administration will focus on real environmental challenges, not phony ones:

• We will reject Hillary Clinton’s poverty-expansion agenda that enriches her friends and makes everyone else poor.
• We’ll solve real environmental problems in our communities like the need for clean and safe drinking water. President Obama actually tried to cut the funding for our drinking water infrastructure – even as he pushed to increase funding for his EPA bureaucrats.
• American workers will be the ones building this new infrastructure.

 Here is my 100-day action plan:

• We’re going to rescind all the job-destroying Obama executive actions including the Climate Action Plan and the Waters of the U.S. rule.
• We’re going to save the coal industry and other industries threatened by Hillary Clinton’s extremist agenda.
• I’m going to ask Trans Canada to renew its permit application for the Keystone Pipeline.
• We’re going to lift moratoriums on energy production in federal areas
• We’re going to revoke policies that impose unwarranted restrictions on new drilling technologies. These technologies create millions of jobs with a smaller footprint than ever before.
• We’re going to cancel the Paris Climate Agreement and stop all payments of U.S. tax dollars to U.N. global warming programs.
• Any regulation that is outdated, unnecessary, bad for workers, or contrary to the national interest will be scrapped. We will also eliminate duplication, provide regulatory certainty, and trust local officials and local residents.
• Any future regulation will go through a simple test: is this regulation good for the American worker? If it doesn’t pass this test, the rule will not be approved.

Policy decisions will be public and transparent. They won’t be made on Hillary’s private email account.

We’re going to do all this while taking proper regard for rational environmental concerns. We are going to conserve our beautiful natural habitats, reserves and resources. In a Trump Administration, political activists with extreme agendas will no longer write the rules. Instead, we will work with conservationists whose only agenda is protecting nature. From an environmental standpoint, my priorities are very simple: clean air and clean water.

My America First energy plan will do for the American People what Hillary Clinton will never do: create real jobs and real wage growth. According to the Institute for Energy Research, lifting the restrictions on American energy will create a flood of new jobs:

• Almost a $700 billion increase in annual economic output over the next 30 years.
• More than a $30 billion increase in annual wages over the next 7 years.
• Over the next four decades, more than $20 trillion in additional economic activity and $6 trillion in new tax revenue.

The oil and natural gas industry supports 10 million high-paying Americans jobs and can create another 400,000 new jobs per year. This exploration will also create a resurgence in American manufacturing — dramatically reducing both our trade deficit and our budget deficit. Compare this future to Hillary Clinton’s Venezuela-style politics of poverty.

Comment

“Energy Independence,” as the term “Energy Security,” is nebulous and ready for the scrap heap. The guiding principle should be minimal regulation and open competition between domestic energy, energy throughout the Americas, and the rest of the world.

Perhaps Trump should state market-based energy independence to signify that the best security with strategic minerals and virtually every other good or service is a free-market at home.