For decades, American oil and natural gas dominance quietly rewired global geopolitics. By flooding markets with reliable, affordable energy, America undercut the leverage of petro-states such as Iran, Russia, and Venezuela. To confront the global threat of China, we must repeat that success — not just with oil and gas, but with nuclear power, renewables, and the critical minerals that fuel them.
Because when America produces energy in abundance, our adversaries lose power.
It just happened again in President Donald Trump’s recently announced trade deal with India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi not only agreed to purchase U.S. energy but also to stop buying oil from Russia. America will get a windfall of profits, Russia will lose funding for its war machine in Ukraine, and India will move even closer into the American orbit.
INDIA AGREES TO STOP BUYING RUSSIAN OIL AS TRADE DEAL REACHED WITH US
This deal with India was only possible because the innovative shale revolution overcame fears of “peak oil” and unlocked vast new reserves of American oil and gas. This surge in production lowered gas prices at home and broke the cartel logic of global energy markets. OPEC could no longer manipulate the global economy with a word. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Europe was able to reduce its dependence on Russian energy because of American liquefied natural gas exports. Iran’s oil leverage weakened as global supply diversified, leaving the regime weaker than ever before. And Venezuela’s political power collapsed when oil revenues vanished.
We can apply this same pressure to China, but with a twist. Like our adversaries before, China is an energy powerhouse. However, its power is not rooted in oil and gas, but the energy industries of the future: nuclear, solar, batteries, and the mining and processing of critical minerals. While the United States was engaged in partisan bickering, treating clean energy as a climate hobby instead of a strategic weapon, Beijing has been executing a plan to achieve geopolitical dominance through next-gen energy generation.
That dominance is starting to show. Today, China controls over 80% of global solar panel manufacturing, dominates lithium, cobalt, and graphite processing, and is racing ahead in nuclear supply chains. Over 10 years, from 2014 to 2023, China’s nuclear power capacity nearly tripled.
As nuclear and renewable energy decline in cost and the world continues to diversify its energy sources, China will come out further and further ahead. Instead of beating America in a head-to-head race on oil and gas, it is outflanking us with new energy technologies.
To regain position, the U.S. must counter China’s growing energy influence by dominating the nuclear and renewable industries, just as we did with oil and gas.
Let’s start with nuclear.
Nuclear, including easy-to-deploy small modular reactors, provides clean, constant energy that can be co-located with industry. Unfortunately, the U.S. spent decades winding down nuclear plants instead of putting more online. The Trump administration has reversed this negative trend by accelerating nuclear approval and deployment. We should build on these successes.
It takes roughly 11 years to build a nuclear reactor in the U.S., not because of construction time, but because of overly aggressive permitting and regulatory requirements. We need a new regulatory paradigm, including a standardized approval process and pathway designed for repeatable, factory-built systems. Of course, safety must remain paramount, but regulation should enable production, not kill projects with needless bureaucratic foot-dragging.
Likewise, the new Energy Dominance Fund is essential, helping bridge the gap between early deployment of nuclear and other energy tech and mass production. The private sector is wary of investing in new energy projects with high up-front costs and years of delays. Well-managed public support can help bring projects online, not only generating a return for the taxpayers but also increasing our production capacity.
In addition, we must pursue renewables just as aggressively. Solar and storage are not inherently Chinese technologies. They became Chinese because Beijing subsidized manufacturing, ignored environmental standards in both mining and manufacturing, used forced labor, and crushed competitors. For years, Washington responded with climate symbolism, allowing China to pose as a green energy champion even while it wrecked the environment. Our trade policy should reverse course by punishing environmental laggards with pollution tariffs rather than assuming the status quo is inevitable.
Along with updating trade policy, we need much less empty climate rhetoric and a much more aggressive energy industrial policy. That starts with building supply chains at home: mining lithium, copper, and rare earths domestically; processing them domestically; and manufacturing panels, turbines, reactors, and batteries domestically. The U.S. government’s multibillion-dollar deal to resurrect the Mountain Pass rare earth mine was a great move, as were the administration’s mineral access deals with nations around the world.
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We can’t delay. Beijing doesn’t play by traditional rules. It integrates state planning, industrial execution, and geopolitical ambition, aggressively advancing nuclear and renewable energy as tools of power projection. But by unleashing the full power of the U.S. government and private sector, we can retake the lead.
American oil and gas dominance helped us overcome our adversaries of the last 50 years. If we dominate the future of energy, we will outcompete China for the next 50.
Chris Johnson is president and co-founder of the American Energy Leadership Institute, a conservative energy policy research and advocacy organization working to ensure America leads and dominates the 21st century.