U.S. President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national energy emergency on his first day back in office framed fossil fuel production as a geopolitical weapon. “Energy dominance” — flooding global markets with American oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) — would reassert American power, undercut China’s clean-technology leverage and discipline allies into dependence. Eighteen months on, the doctrine is revealing some of its contradictions, and nowhere more acutely than in Taiwan.
The numbers behind assertions of U.S. dominance are real. Boosted by the shale revolution initiated in 2005, oil and gas production has reached record highs, with over 13.6 million barrels of oil per day in 2025. U.S. LNG exports already commanded roughly one-third of the global market before the Hormuz crisis and the EU could depend on the U.S. for 80 per cent of its LNG imports by 2028.
