A made up term used by oil companies and republicans.
The term has various non-literal definitions. And the US did satisfy some of these definitions under Trump in 2020 — as it did again in the 11 months of 2021, mostly under Biden.
Why were we IMPORTING oil?
The US
exported more crude oil and petroleum products than it imported. It also produced more
primary energy than it consumed.
But none of that means that the Trump-era US did no energy importing at all. From the beginning of Trump's term to the end, the US very much relied on oil and gas from abroad.
In 2020, Trump's last full year in office, the US imported about
7.9 million barrels per day of crude oil and
petroleum products. That was down from prior years -- the US imported more than 10 million barrels per day in 2016, President Barack Obama's last full year -- but still a whole lot of foreign energy.
Before Biden
announced a
ban on imports of Russian energy last Tuesday, some Republicans suggested that the US had suddenly started importing Russian oil under Biden.
For example, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis
said at an event in late February: "We were, before Biden took office, for the first time in any of our lifetimes, actually energy independent. Putin didn't matter. Now, they're importing millions of barrels of oil from Russia."
Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst
said on Fox News on March 6 that Biden's choices when he first came into office "put us in this tenuous position with energy independence in the United States. Instead of being an exporter of energy, we became a consumer of Russian oil."
The truth is that the US was importing a significant quantity of oil and petroleum products from Russia under Trump:
over 137 million barrels in 2018, then 189.8 million barrels in 2019 and 197.7 million barrels in 2020.