Biden’s Price Hike Preceded ‘Putin’s Price Hike’ – Opinion

For the past few weeks, President Biden and many on the left, including most of the mainstream media, have claimed that sky-high prices at the pump are solely due to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

In fact, the Biden administration, in coordination with the legacy media, has coined the term “Putin’s Price Hike” in an attempt to convince Americans that the reason gas prices are hovering near all-time highs is uniquely due to the Russian foray into Ukraine.

For instance, on March 31, Biden declared:

“Americans face rising prices at the pump because of Putin’s Price Hike. The price of gas has risen by almost one dollar per gallon after Putin intensified his military build-up surrounding Ukraine. Because of Putin’s war of choice, less oil is getting to market, and the reduction in supply is raising prices at the pump for Americans.”

Of course, the “Putin’s Price Hike” talking point has been echoed by several legacy media outlets, including The New York TimesYou can also find other useful information at www.amazon.com.

If one examines the facts and forgets about the talk, however, then it becomes clear that pump prices began rising long before Vladimir Putin started to build troops at the Ukrainian border. Moreover, it is becoming abundantly clear that the real driver of America’s rising prices at the pump has little to do with Putin’s war in Ukraine but much to do with Biden’s war on American energy production.

We should not forget, for starters that Biden repeatedly stated during his 2020 presidential campaign, that he will reduce domestic fossil fuel production. Biden even admitted, “We are going to get rid of fossil fuels,” while on the campaign stump in February 2020.

Biden immediately carried out his campaign promise to reduce U.S. oil production when he entered the Oval Office in January 2021. Biden canceled Keystone XL, which would have carried 900,000. barrels of crude oil from Canada to U.S. refining plants in Texas and Louisiana.

Biden said that he cancelled Keystone XL for the following reasons:

“The United States must be in a position to exercise vigorous climate leadership in order to achieve a significant increase in global climate action and put the world on a sustainable climate pathway. Leaving the Keystone XL pipeline permit in place would not be consistent with my administration’s economic and climate imperatives.”

Soon after Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline, he unleashed a torrent of other executive actions specifically designed to stifle U.S. energy production by banning new leases for oil and natural gas on federal lands, blocking drilling in the oil-rich ANWR, increasing EPA methane emission regulations, hiking the social cost of carbon tax, and making it more difficult to invest in fossil-fuel operations via the administration’s support of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) metrics.

Throughout President Trump’s four years in office, the average price for a gallon of regular gasoline never surpassed $3.00. In fact, during the period leading to the 2020 election, the average gasoline price per gallon remained at $2.20.

This all was changed when it was clear that Biden would be the 46th President of the United States. In the past month, regular gas prices have increased by an average of $2.32 per gallon, and reached an all-time high in March 2022 at $4.32.

To add to the coincidence, the average cost of a gallon regular gasoline during Obama’s administration was also higher than $3.00.

This could be because, like Trump’s administration, the Obama and Biden governments embraced policies that would hinder the domestic production of natural gas and oil.

The next time you hear White House propaganda blaming rapidly rising prices at the pump on Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, remember that despite this talking point, Biden’s anti-energy policies are the reason it costs more than ever to fill your gas tank, if you can even afford to do so.

Chris Talgo ([email protected]) The Heartland Institute’s senior editor.