The Crude Logic of Trump’s America | Opinion - Newsweek

If you were to look for one common thread that runs the length of the Trump administration, you would find one long slippery one: oil. Oil connects President Donald Trump’s foreign and domestic policy the way clouds connect to rain.

This past week’s decision to roll back mileage standards for cars and trucks is but the latest example of how everything is about oil. Trump says it’s about lowering car and truck prices, but in case you are one of the last people on Earth who doesn’t know it, Trump is a stranger to the truth.

The mileage decision is really about maintaining the dominance of oil companies over American consumers. According to an anti-corruption report led by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), between campaign and inauguration contributions, oil companies pumped $220 million into Trump before he took office. As the report illustrates, he’s been paying them back ever since by appointing ex-oil industry employees to 26 top administration positions, canceling renewable energy tax credits and grants, and spending over $1.6 billion of taxpayer money to cancel wind projects. According to Whitehouse, canceled wind projects leave conventional fossil-fuel-reliant grid rates of around 18 cents per kilowatt-hour replacing 9 cents per kilowatt-hour wind power. Guess who pays the difference?

And it’s not limited to domestic oil. Trump actually prefers to perform for the amusement of more overtly corrupt Middle Eastern oil overlords. It’s paid off beautifully for Trump. Qatar gave him a $400 million plane, and Trump gave Qatar a unilateral security guarantee and a military base in the U.S. After the Trump Organization launched a $1 billion new Trump golf course in Saudi Arabia last year, the payback was swift.

While the United States has spent around $40 billion on an “excursion” to keep Iran non-nuclear, around two months after the golf course announcement, Trump announced a deal to make help Saudi Arabia develop nuclear power. This came after Trump also agreed to sell the kingdom ultrasensitive F-35 fighter planes. Things were about the same with the UAE, where the president’s brother bankrolled Trump’s crypto venture to the tune of $500 million. Just months after the investment, Trump approved the sale of supersensitive microchip technology to the UAE, despite warnings against it.

Trump’s petro-powered policies haven’t been confined to commerce and diplomacy either. It has fatally invaded his role as commander-in-chief. Trump’s little excursion into Iran wasn’t just about doing Israel’s bidding. Remember what proceeded it. Trump was shocked, shocked to find that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was a major cocaine smuggler whose depredations on Americans merited a military response.

Of course, you may have forgotten about all that by now since we now know that the attack on that country was all about—you guessed it—oil. Venezuela has the largest untapped oil reserves in the world. Since beginning his coercion of that country, the U.S. government has collected over $13 billion from Venezuelan oil sales. As little as $300 million of this may have made its way back to Venezuela. Where’s the rest of it? Nobody seems to know for sure. The important thing for Trump is that it seemed like a really good grab.

So, he tried for another one. Who has the third largest oil reserves in the world right after Trump’s Saudi sugar daddies? Yup. It’s Iran all right, and shortly after Trump’s success in looting Venezuela you could see him salivating over Iran. In fact, Trump began drooling over it long ago, first suggesting seizing Iranian oil as far back as 1987 in an interview with ABC's Barbara Walters. Since Trump launched the war, it has been a steady drumbeat that alternates with his periodic explosions about annihilating Iranian civilization. In April, Trump was shouting online to “TAKE THE OIL, & MAKE A FORTUNE.” In June, Trump said the U.S. would "assume total control" of the Iranian oil industry and seize its main oil terminal at Kharg Island.

Unfortunately, this time it looks like he is pumping a dry well. Somebody forgot to pass on his own earlier advice that past “forever wars” in that area hadn’t gone so well, failing to bring stability to the region and costing the United States $8 trillion. Perhaps the temptation of more of that Texas tea was just too much for him.

Thomas G. Moukawsher is a former Connecticut complex litigation judge. He is the author of the book, The Common Flaw: Needless Complexity in the Courts and 50 Ways to Reduce It and a forthcoming book entitled How to Sue the Government.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.