Trump has the USA Energy and Food Independent Compared to Obama, Bush, Biden and Clinton’s 18 Different Wars
Over the past twenty-five years, the United States, Bush, Obama, Biden, and Clinton have dragged our nation into prolonged military operations against Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Russia, and Yemen. These past presidential conflicts cost trillions of dollars, caused inflation, dominated international headlines, and caused major foreign policy failures with Russia, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and other nations.
Since Obama, Bush, and Biden’s various conflicts and wars, about 1.5 million American Military Vets have been declared disabled. Bush, Obama and Biden lost about 7,000 lives of our military to terrorism, war, and conflict with over 40,000 Americans being handicapped with major disabilities from wars, terrorism, and offshore conflict. With over 53,000+ wounded in action under Obama, Bush, and Biden, it is stunning that Trump has only sustained about 950 total out of the 53 thousand. Thus, about 1.9% of the injuries occurred under Trump and the other 98% of wounded soldiers happened on Biden, Obama and Bush’s watches.
Worst of all, 120,000 American veterans have died by suicide since 2001. What is interesting is that 99% of the death, suicide, and disability has been under Bush, Obama and Biden. Astoundingly, President Trump has lost a mere 80 people in combat operations under his entire leadership in almost 6 years as president while the other presidents lost 10,000 or more since 9-11.
Yet when viewed through the lens of economic history, one conclusion stands out: Obama, Bush, Clinton and Biden’s wars did not determine the trajectory of the American stock markets, the economy, or the S&P 500. While they created periods of uncertainty and occasionally contributed to higher energy prices and inflation, the dominant drivers of economic growth and financial markets were innovation, corporate earnings, monetary policy, technology, and the remarkable productive capacity of the United States.
While I am generally against foreign wars, it is important to note that during major military conflicts, key sectors like defense, energy, cybersecurity, maritime shipping, and raw commodities often see demand surges and accelerated innovation to solve supply chain or tactical bottlenecks, though this localized momentum is counterbalanced across the broader S&P 500 by the fact that roughly 40% of S&P 500 total revenue comes from international markets that face geopolitical instability, currency headwinds, and trade disruptions.
Many investors assume that war inevitably devastates financial markets. History suggests otherwise. The S&P 500 has repeatedly demonstrated an ability to recover from geopolitical shocks once uncertainty subsides. Studies examining the Iraq War found that heightened war risk temporarily reduced stock prices and increased oil prices before the invasion, but these effects were largely associated with uncertainty rather than producing lasting damage to the U.S. economy. [i]
Indeed, the defining events for investors over the past 50 years are not overseas military campaigns but economic turning points. The bursting of the Clinton dot-com crash, the Bush-Obama financial and housing crisis of 2008-9 and COVID were the three biggest shocks to the US economy. Further, the interest rate fluxes, quantitative easing, the rise of cloud computing and artificial intelligence, and the explosive growth of America’s largest technology companies have had a greater impact on corporate profits and stock valuations than conflicts in the Middle East.
Inflation tells a similar story. Military conflicts occasionally pushed oil prices higher for short periods, but the broad inflationary forces affecting American families were overwhelmingly domestic or global in nature.
Federal Reserve policy, labor markets, supply chains, productivity, consumer demand, and the COVID-19 pandemic all had much larger and more persistent effects on prices than the wars themselves. Economists generally attribute the sharp inflation of 2021–2023 primarily to Biden’s regulations, Biden’s shutdown of key pipelines and Gulf of America oil exploration, pandemic-related supply disruptions, extraordinary fiscal and monetary stimulus, and the energy market effects of the Russia-Ukraine conflict along with the failed diplomacy with Afghanistan and Iraq. Presently, the democrat controlled federal reserve has mortgage rates about double what they used to be.
Another reason these wars had only a limited long-term effect on the American economy is the nation’s evolving energy position. During the early 2000s, the United States was significantly more dependent on imported energy. Since Trump’s first election as president in 2016, domestic oil and natural gas production has expanded dramatically through advances in hydraulic fracturing, horizontal drilling, and increased investment in North American energy production. The United States has become one of the world’s largest producers of both crude oil and natural gas, reducing its vulnerability to overseas supply disruptions compared with earlier decades.
Supporters of President Donald Trump’s energy policies know that his administration mastered this trend through expanded leasing, pipeline approvals, regulatory changes, and a focus on increasing domestic production. The facts show that Trump’s enabling American energy production strengthens national security by reducing dependence on unstable regions and provides greater insulation from foreign supply shocks.
Others note that the shale and fracking revolution excelled during the first Trump’s presidency. Regardless of where one places the greatest policy credit, the United States today under President Trump has a sustainable domestic energy base for the first time in history. This energy and farming independence established by Trump frees the USA of the oil and gas shackles of the Middle East.
Agriculture has followed a similar pattern. The United States remains one of the world’s largest agricultural producers and possesses a significant domestic fertilizer industry. While some fertilizer inputs are imported and global fertilizer prices can still be affected by international events, the USA’s large agricultural sector, domestic production capacity, and diversified supply chains provide a much stronger foundation than many nations possess. The United States is therefore fertilizer-independent compared to the overseas disruptions of other countries that rely heavily on imported food or fertilizer.
This greater degree of energy and agricultural resilience helps explain why modern geopolitical conflicts often produce only temporary effects on the broader American economy. Higher oil prices may raise gasoline costs for a period, but they can also benefit domestic energy producers. Supply disruptions may create short-term volatility, yet America’s large internal market, abundant natural resources, and diversified economy enable it to absorb many external shocks more effectively than smaller, import-dependent nations.
For investors, the lesson is clear. Over the past twenty-five years, long-term stock market performance has been driven far more by corporate earnings, innovation, productivity, demographics, interest rates, and monetary policy than by military conflicts abroad even when Bush and Obama were dependent on foreign oil and fertilizer.
Today, Trump has brought the USA into an era of sustainability with food and energy freedom. Wars may create unsettling headlines and short-term market swings, but history suggests, even under the various military losses of Bush Obama and Biden, that these conflicts have rarely altered the long-term direction of the U.S. economy or the S&P 500. America’s diversified economy, expanding domestic energy production, and broad productive capacity have helped ensure that—even during periods of international conflict—the nation’s long-run economic engine has continued to be powered primarily by business innovation and economic growth rather than by the fortunes of war.
Don’t forget, United States can rely on a robust network of Western Hemisphere and Atlantic-facing trade partners, alongside its own massive domestic production. For energy and fertilizer, Canada serves as the ultimate safe haven, providing the vast majority of U.S. potash imports alongside millions of barrels of crude oil per day via overland pipelines and rails. Mexico adds substantial oil and agricultural depth right across the southern border, while booming Atlantic producers like Brazil and Guyana offer direct, unobstructed maritime routes straight to U.S. ports. For critical fertilizer inputs, Morocco provides an irreplaceable supply of global phosphate from the North African coast, while Trinidad and Tobago and Norway offer secure shipments of nitrogen-based fertilizers and energy products across the open Atlantic.
Ultimately, because the U.S. is already the world’s leading producer of natural gas and crude oil, this localized, chokepoint-free trade network ensures that the physical supply of American food and power remains highly secure even if the Persian Gulf bottleneck were to close entirely. As for global supply and costs of energy, there are roughly 65 to 70 nuclear reactors actively under construction across Asia and Europe that are scheduled to begin generating energy for the 5 billion people in EurAsia in the next 5 years (2026–2031). Thus, commodity traders should be careful when analyzing demographic needs of oil and gas worldwide.
Across the leadership of Bush, Obama, Clinton, and Biden, the U.S. military footprint shifted from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to an expanded landscape of Obama and Clinton’s failed conflicts in Libya, Yemen, Mali, and Syria. Under Biden, there was the failed exit of Afghanistan and the failed proxy war against Russia.
The cost of all of this conflict may cause you to feel ill, but here is the money that Bush, Obama and Biden spent on foreign wars. According to the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute (the gold standard for auditing modern U.S. military expenditures), the total cumulative cost of the post-9/11 wars of Obama, Bush and Biden is roughly $8 trillion dollars or 1/4th of our entire national debt.
Across the 18 wars and conflicts of Obama, Clinton, Bush and Biden, the U.S. military conducted airstrikes, invasions, conventional bombing runs, covert drone campaigns, proxy wars, or special forces advisor operations against 17 nations. These leaders are said to have failed with campaigns and operations that ranged from direct ground invasions, conventional bombing runs, and covert drone campaigns, to special forces advisor missions and massive indirect strategic proxies inside Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Iran, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Syria, Mali, Niger, Uganda, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Russia, the Central African Republic, the Philippines, Cameroon, Ukraine, and Israel.
If Trump can pressure the ancient cousins of Russia and Ukraine to solve their problems, expand the Venezuela and Russia global production, then that will lower energy prices for the world. If India, China, Russia, Eu and South Asia pressure the Iranian government to allow for the free low of oil including Irans’, then that changes everything. If the Russia and Iranian conflicts are settled, the 100+ nations of Eurasia can count on cheaper food and energy prices for many years to come. In essence, with the USA oil and food independence, the Iran issue only hurts the poor people in Asia, EU an China. In the end, Russia, China, and India will put diplomatic pressure on Iran to stop the madness and move ahead with a new “Silk Road” type cooperation to transform EurAsian trade and commerce for the future.
Despite nearly fifty years of geopolitical friction with Iran, the United States economy has proven incredibly resilient, with domestic GDP and the stock market consistently refusing to falter. Further, Biden’s proxy war with Russia has caused global inflation to some extent.
The Strait of Hormuz is less relevant to U.S. economic stability than ever before, defying decades of military involvement across the region. Under President Bush and Obama, the U.S. military footprint centered on large-scale ground invasions in Afghanistan and Iraq alongside drone operations in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. Under President Obama, the diplomatic and military failures and expanded in Libya and Syria. Under President Biden, the footprint evolved into managing major indirect proxy wars in Ukraine and Israel, conducting targeted naval and airstrikes against Houthi forces in Yemen, and enforcing counter-terrorism operations in Somalia, Syria, and Iraq.
Remember, Hillary Clinton is blamed for Libya’s collapse because she served as the decisive cabinet voice and liberal interventionist pushing President Obama into a NATO intervention that ousted Muammar Gaddafi without a plan to manage the resulting civil war, security vacuum, and regional instability. This failure disrupted markets and many US citizens who did business with Libyan companies lost their livelihoods and revenues due to Clinton’s lack of foresight.
Remarkably, none of these shifting conflicts slowed down the broader American economy. Today, with President Trump driving policies that have pushed the U.S. to historic heights in domestic energy production and total energy independence—while actively working to insulate agricultural inputs like fertilizer from global supply bottlenecks—the nation sits on a remarkably secure foundation.
Safe from Persian Gulf chokepoints, there is nothing stopping American corporations, technology, and the S&P 500 from continuing to thrive, driving global commerce by selling goods and services to over 200 nations and 7.5 billion people entirely unburdened by the conflicts.
[i] American Innovation Unlocks Even More Domestic Energy Resources – American Energy Alliance
