The United States seems to be on track to join Iran, Russia and Saudi Arabia as one of the world’s leading energy powerhouses. In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry predicted that America would become a net exporter of energy within the next 18 months as the U.S. ramps up its production of liquefied natural gas.

“Here we are, the number one oil-and-gas-producing country in the world now,” Secretary Perry said. “In just a few years, probably within the next 12 to 18 months, we will become a net-exporting energy country.”

Secretary Perry’s comments echo the findings of a U.S. Energy Information Administration report from February. This report projects that the U.S. will become a net exporter of energy by 2020 if high oil prices cause the nation to consume less oil and sell more gas. In a low oil price scenario, however, the U.S. could remain a net importer through 2050.

Last year, the U.S. imported 27 quadrillion British thermal units of energy (quads) and exported 18 quads. To close this nine-quad gap to energy independence, the Trump administration plans to export more gas to China and Europe.

But Vladimir Putin’s Russian petrostate stands in the way of this plan.

Since Russian gas flows down a network of long-established pipelines into Europe, it costs roughly 30 percent less than U.S. gas, which has to be liquefied and shipped across the Atlantic before it can be piped to its final destination. The Trump administration is hoping that Europeans will be willing to pay this 30 percent premium in order to break their addiction to Russian energy, but this is a pipe dream. West European industries bought Russian gas even during the height of the Cold War, and they have no plans to stop now. In fact, the imminent completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany will make Europe even more reliant on Russia and less reliant on America.

Without a European marketplace, U.S. exporters of natural gas will have to consider turning to Asia. But even here, Russia is building a Power of Siberia pipeline with the capacity to deliver over 1 quad of natural gas to China each year. Several industry sources indicate that this Russian pipeline gas may be 20 percent more expensive than U.S. liquefied natural gas, but an escalating trade war between the U.S. and China could change that fact. By imposing tariffs on U.S. gas exports, China could cause considerable damage to the U.S. economy and close this market to U.S. energy exports.

So, even as the U.S. produces more and more energy, the stage is being set for it to be excluded from the international energy market. For decades, the Philadelphia Trumpet and its parent magazine, the Plain Truth, have predicted that China, Germany and Russia would shut the U.S. out of more and more markets.

“Actually World War iii has started—not as a hydrogen-bomb military invasion, but as an economic war,” Herbert W. Armstrong wrote in the October 1960 Plain Truth. “And while Russia is making gains everywhere—in Laos, as stepping-stone to domination of all Southeastern Asia; in central Africa; in Japan; in Cuba as stepping-stone to all South America—while Russia is capturing the news headlines with these gains and space-flight spectaculars—it is this European Common Market that is fast winning the world trade war!”

Now, Russia and the European Union are working together to exclude America from the energy export business. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker can talk about buying more natural gas, but the construction of pipelines like Nord Stream and Power of Siberia show that China, Germany and Russia have other plans.

Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote in the July 2016 issue that this coming trade bloc will besiege the United States and Britain, leaving them locked out of world trade.

These predictions aren’t just good guesses; they are based on Bible prophecy. Isaiah 22 and 23 and Ezekiel 27 foretell a great “mart of nations” that will besiege the end-time nations of Israel as correction for their terrible sins. Some may mock us for letting Bible prophecy inform our analysis of world events, but it’s getting harder to deny that China, Germany and Russia are planning a new world economic order that undermines the U.S. as a world superpower.

For more information on the biblical identity of modern-day nations, please read “America’s Lost Identity,” “Is China in the Bible?,” “The Remarkable Identity of the German People” and “The Origins of Modern Russia.”