On the opening day of 2020’s Republican National Convention in Charlotte, President Trump championed the remarkable achievement of American energy independence.

“We have achieved American energy independence. We’re now #1 in the world by far. . . These phonies, they want to end everything we have done. . . We have done things nobody thought was possible, for example, the Keystone pipeline. . . Basically, [Democrats] want no fossil fuel whatsoever. No gas, no oil, no coal, no nothing,” he said.

After years of dependence on the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), for half our oil, America has become largely independent. We now export as much oil as we import. Further, as of 2019, Saudi Arabia provided a mere 6% of our oil.

If Joe Biden had his way, we would still be dependent on OPEC countries like Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. In 1981, Joe Biden voted to nullify President Reagan’s plan that started us on the path to energy independence. Reagan’s plan to deregulate oil and natural gas prices survived despite Biden’s foolish vote. As a result, our oil imports dropped from 45% to 28%.

Unfortunately, Biden did not learn from experience. In a debate with socialist Bernie Sanders in March of this year, he admitted—then backtracked the next day—that he would ban new fracking. Fracking, of course, is among the greatest innovations in oil drilling that contributes to the ongoing effort to achieve complete energy independence.

In Biden’s America, it would be only a matter of time before we‘re back to relying on foreign producers to keep our economy moving.