President Trump is Right to Respond to Oil and Gas Warfare
President Donald Trump’s intervention to boost global oil prices was the right move to counter market manipulation by Saudi Arabia and Russia at a time when America faces economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic and an energy crisis exacerbated by the unprecedented loss of demand.
American leaders are ordinarily right to let the free market set prices. But our emergence as the world’s top oil and gas producer has increased our self-reliance, brought affordability home and altered the global energy landscape to the point that other countries committed economic self-harm to try to crush our energy industry.
That kind of economic warfare demands a U.S. government response.
Energy is critical to economic and national security, contributing about 8% of our gross domestic product and over 10 million jobs. It is also, as we have learned from the crisis, a linchpin to our national supply chain and manufacturing infrastructure, more of which we must onshore to keep us from relying on other nations in future crises.
Our dominance in energy has created historically low energy and gasoline prices for most Americans and we should see more of that, even as global energy prices rise in response to the oil price deal the president helped broker.
Consumer Energy Alliance always supports affordable, reliable energy, but no one benefits when prices are so low that hundreds of thousands of workers are unemployed and wells are shut in.
A healthy energy industry has been a part of every American economic recovery in recent history, driving job creation and infrastructure building.
Government intervention must always be as limited as possible, but it is needed now and it is the first essential step in setting us on the path to self-reliant renewal, where our supply chains from energy to medical supplies to essential goods no longer depend on other nations.