Russia Conflict Proves Trump Prophetic on Manufacturing Independence

AMAC Exclusive – By Andrew Abbott

The ongoing conflict in Ukraine has laid bare just how critical energy independence is to U.S. national security. But even as President Biden and Congressional Democrats frantically try to rewrite history on their deliberate surrender of the energy independence achieved under President Trump, America’s manufacturing sector still remains dangerously reliant on our foreign adversaries – another, perhaps even more dire national security threat that Trump long sought to address.

When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed Congress last week, he pushed explicitly for businesses to sever their ties with Russia, thereby crippling Putin’s ability to wage war. “If you have companies in your districts who financed the Russian military machine,” Zelensky said, “I am asking to make sure that the Russians do not receive a single penny that they use to destroy people in Ukraine.”

Many western countries and companies have already halted their business in Russia, including major payment processors like Visa and Mastercard. As Putin’s army continues to face fierce Ukrainian opposition, top strategists hope that the crippling military and financial costs of sanctions and boycotts will cripple the Russian war effort as well.

Even as many U.S. businesses have taken the lead on this front, however, many European countries are so dependent on Russian energy that they have refused to cut ties in the country for fear that the lights may soon go out in their own homes. Donald Trump’s warning in 2018 about European countries being “held captive” by Russia has thus proven prescient, and further underscored the wisdom of his tireless pursuit of energy independence for the United States.

After much delay, President Biden finally acquiesced to calls to stop imports of Russian oil to the U.S., announcing a release of 60 million barrels of oil from the strategic petroleum reserve in an attempt to offset the subsequent spike in prices. By and large, the country has thus far managed to find new supplies to meet its energy needs, even though gas prices have reached all-time highs. However, it is worth remembering that those costs are unnecessary ones, and are a direct result of Democrats’ far-left energy agenda inspired by the Green New Deal.

Witnessing what has happened to Russia as the country has been cut off from the global economy has highlighted another danger for America: our reliance on foreign manufacturing. This is particularly alarming due to the obvious potential for a future conflict or needs to rapidly cut economic ties with Communist China.

Since the Cold War, support for the global “free trade” regime has been the predominant view among American presidents of both parties. Yet free trade was about far more than simple economics. By fostering trade with other democratic countries, America’s strategic global ties strengthened. These ties strengthened western powers while China and the Soviet Union floundered under the weight of failed “centrally planned economies.”

America continued to advance free trade even after the Soviet Union collapsed and China began to open up, with many experts predicting that nations would be so economically intertwined that the possibility of global war would be nonexistent. But the downfalls of this policy soon became apparent. As free trade flourished, international corporations, under the guise of free trade and globalism, outsourced American manufacturing of everything from medical goods to semiconductors to foreign countries, not only devastating blue-collar communities in the U.S. but also making American manufacturers and even the U.S. military reliant on imports from countries that were not always friendly to the United States.

The most calamitous example of this failure is our current relationship with China. During the Cold War, many Western experts believed that if China were made a “low-cost producer” of American goods, the resultant Chinese middle class would, in turn, overthrow the Chinese Communist Party. Instead, the Chinese Communist Party continued to maintain total control while luring western investments with the promise of cheap labor and a growing consumer base. As a result, many experts now agree that the “U.S. cannot survive without imports” from China.

All of this should raise a major red flag for American leadership. If China were to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or if they were to launch a similar unilateral invasion of a sovereign nation like Taiwan, what would America’s recourse be? As harmful as American sanctions on Russia have been to the U.S. economy, similar sanctions on China would cause far more damage and drastically alter the lives of ordinary Americans. It is possible that if China were to back Russia in a potential attack on a NATO ally, America would be forced to choose between honoring its Article V commitments and mass shortages of critical goods that could not be easily replaced.

President Trump warned of this threat and became the first president in decades to systematically bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic only further proved how important domestic manufacturing is, as the U.S. was suddenly faced with severe shortages of medical equipment and other needed supplies.

Recognizing the success of President Trump’s “Made in America” mantra, Joe Biden has paid lip service to restoring the American manufacturing sector but has thus far failed to continue the progress begun under President Trump. After 50 years in politics, it seems that Biden just can’t break from his globalist roots. And if his complete failure on energy policy is any indication, Americans shouldn’t expect a restoration of the manufacturing sector anytime soon. It appears as if a new leader in the White House – or perhaps the return of a former one – will be needed to finally secure American manufacturing independence and deliver the U.S. from a dangerous reliance on foreign products. 

Andrew Abbott is the pen name of a writer and public affairs consultant with over a decade of experience in DC at the intersection of politics and culture.