Trump’s ‘U.S. ENERGY DOMINANCE’ delusion could render the U.S. an economic backwater

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The rest of the world isn’t going to be tariffed into embracing Trump’s vision of a mid mod economy. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

When Donald Trump designated North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum to be Secretary of Interior, Trump also announced he expects Burgum to, you know, control the entire energy supply of planet Earth.

Burgum’s duties will include chairing something called a “National Energy Council” which will, according to Trump, “oversee the path to U.S. ENERGY DOMINANCE.”

“America,” Trump said in a statement designating Burgum as global energy czar, “is blessed with vast amounts of ‘Liquid Gold’ and other valuable Minerals and Resources, right beneath our feet. We will ‘DRILL BABY DRILL’”.

The U.S. is already the world’s leading producer of oil and gas, and has been for years.

But a lot of other countries produce oil.

And a lot of them have a lot more oil than the U.S. does.

Estimates show the U.S. has less than 4% of the world’s total proven oil reserves. At least seven nations, including five in the Mideast, are “blessed with vast amounts of ‘Liquid Gold’” in larger quantities than the U.S.

There are a lot of reasons why those nations don’t “drill baby drill” more oil than they do, not least being the principle of supply and demand.

The International Energy Agency projects global demand for oil will peak in 2030. A Goldman Sachs Research forecast presents a slightly rosier (if you’re in the drill baby drill industry) outlook, with world oil demand not peaking until 2034.

Both outlooks attribute declining oil demand (in 6 years by IEA estimates and in a decade by Goldman Sachs’) to the clean energy transition and the increased market penetration of electric vehicles worldwide.

Trump has condemned both – with the exception of electric vehicles manufactured by his beloved Elon, which continue to account for more EV sales than any other manufacturer in the U.S., though Tesla’s U.S. market share has been shrinking each year as more competitors find more traction.

Globally Tesla’s EV market share fell behind the Chinese firm, BYD, years ago, and Tesla’s share has been getting smaller and smaller.

Multiple EV manufacturers are in the market worldwide. Few if any of those, either domestically or abroad, are going to stop making EVs because Trump envisions a mid-mod global economy ruled by fossil fuels.

Meanwhile, to “drill baby drill” his way to “U.S. ENERGY DOMINANCE” – in other words, for Trump to fulfill his stated vision of a world of customers captive to U.S. oil — Trump would first have to convince or cajole oil corporations (owned by shareholders from all over the globe) to do something they and their investors have not shown an eagerness to do: drill for more oil in the U.S. at current prices.

Let’s say Trump completely eliminated taxes on oil production, and also eliminated income taxes on oil companies (though they are already a lot lower than income taxes for other companies).

And let’s further say Trump decreed an end to all environmental permitting requirements, as well as the end of any and all environmental, health and safety, and workplace regulations that apply to energy production and related activities.

And let’s say Trump also decreed that no state or federal courts may hear any lawsuits filed against oil companies and their contractors in connection with those firms exploring for, producing, refining and transporting petroleum products.

And let’s pretend (hopefully it’s just pretend) that Congress and the courts would obediently go along with all that.

It would encourage some energy conglomerates to step up drilling activity.

But at bottom, drilling decisions are still going to be dictated not by Trump, but by the global price of a barrel of oil.

And Trump, magisterial as he is purported to be, is not going to be unilaterally setting that price, no matter how many grandiose titles he bestows on a billionaire from some Dakota or other.

It’s as if Trump is basing his energy policy – which he contends is also the heart of his economic policy –  on a line made famous in the middle of the 20th century by an actual conservative, William F. Buckley, and “standing athwart history, yelling ‘Stop.’”

Meanwhile, the rest of the developed and developing world is not going to stop following the same path the Biden Administration has charted – away from fossil fuels – for obvious reasons.

To be fair, much of the rest of the world appears just as hell-bent on transgressing – or “disrupting,” as the kids used to say – as half the voters in the U.S. recently indicated they are. Maybe all the economically developed nations will go pop-retro too, turn their backs on reality, and line up for some of that good ol’ American “drill baby drill.”

That seems unlikely though, for exactly the reason so many U.S. voters give when asked why in the name of reason and decency they voted for Trump: The cost of things.

One pressing policy area for which Trump has never articulated a single all-bluster no-evidence plan, nor even much in the way of his customary half-baked on-the-spot off-the-cuff opinions, really, is how to address the staggering and rapidly rising costs of mitigating and cleaning up after the impacts of climate change. (Scary down-on-the-ground example: People are having trouble even finding anyone to sell them home insurance, and if they do, it’s ginormously expensive anymore).

Trump’s blithe disregard for arguably the planet’s most pressing threat to economic and social stability is not widely shared throughout all the nations he hopes to “dominate.” Painfully slow though it may be, they are going in a different direction.

Rather than secure U.S. global economic preeminence, as Trump promises, his myopic faith in “liquid gold” could render the U.S. left behind — an energy outlier, and an economic backwater.

Portions of this column originally appeared in the Daily Current newsletter, which unlike climate crisis mitigation is free, and which you can subscribe to here.