The United States is now the world’s leading energy superpower:
No. 1 in Oil Production, more than Saudi Arabia + Russia + Iran combined.
No. 1 in Natural Gas Production: more than Russia + Iran + China combined.
No. 1 in Crude Oil Exports
No. 1 in Exports of Petroleum Derivatives
The average gasoline price in the United States (in absolute terms) is 17% lower than in China and 44% lower than the EU average.
The price of natural gas in the USA drops 28% this year, while in Europe it rises 58%, partly because Europe bans consumption of U.S. gas produced by fracking. Europe buys liquefied gas from Russia and thus funds its war against Ukraine (wonders of European “green” economics).
According to Trump’s latest statements (let’s see if they’re true), Iran would have agreed to abandon its race for nuclear weapons and hand over all enriched uranium.
“It’s very important that Iran not have nuclear weapons and that it has accepted that. Iran has accepted that and has accepted it very firmly.”
“They have agreed to hand over the nuclear material, including that buried underground due to the attack we carried out with B-2 bombers in July”
“So we have many agreements with Iran and I think a peace deal is going to be signed in a few weeks in a very positive way.”
This would be a monumental victory.
However, moralizing journalists in Europe continue to spread disinformation, without really explaining what’s happening and especially the implications for each country.
Our economic system, whether in the United States, China, or Europe, runs on debt, on new money printed out of thin air. But China’s money supply, measured in dollars, is more than double that of the United States. China achieves its annual growth of ~5% not through productivity increases but largely through debt-financed growth. Its public and private debt level is much higher than that of the USA or Europe. This leaves it in a more vulnerable position. Plus, China produces almost no oil.
The U.S. president has repeated the key phrase several times: “Xi needs oil. We don’t.”
This simple phrase encapsulates the whole issue. Every day of blockade for Iran in the Strait of Hormuz severely affects Iran first, forcing it to close the deal with the USA as soon as possible on halting its nuclear program and its funding of Hezbollah and other terrorist groups. But it also severely affects China’s economy. And to a lesser extent, Europe.
China needs oil, energy. That’s why it builds coal plants as if there were no tomorrow. It’s the only major economy whose energy comes predominantly (52%) from burning coal (USA 8% and Europe 2%). So much so that one could say Chinese electric cars are coal painted green.
The governments of Lebanon and Israel have sat down to negotiate for the first time in nearly 40 years and have agreed to a ceasefire. The Lebanese government has aligned with Israel against Hezbollah, to free Lebanon from Iran’s indirect occupation. Lebanon and Israel have agreed to work together to disarm Hezbollah.
It’s pure realpolitik: whoever controls energy flows controls foreign policy.
In Europe, this geopolitical dimension is almost systematically ignored. In the main debate programs and in the comments of many analysts, the prevailing message is that: Trump is aggressive, unpredictable, he’s “destroying alliances.”
Few journalists describe the maneuver for what it really is: a classic power play by a superpower that exploits its structural advantage (the USA is energy independent) to tip the global balance in its favor, against its main enemy for world peace, which is Iran, and against its main trade rival, which is China.
Instead, in our media, the moralizing approach is preferred: Trump is crazy and/or stupid and/or an enemy of Europe.
The result is a depressing lack of information: the European public receives a caricature of the U.S. president, stripped of its strategic logic, while the concrete consequences on energy prices and the security of maritime routes are presented as the fruit of chaos created by Trump, rather than a struggle for international security and a game among great powers in which Europe should position itself.
Understanding the substance of Trump does not mean approving his methods. It means recognizing that behind his actions lies a very coherent strategic vision (“America First”), applied first to security (to the war with Iran) and then to competition with China. Ignoring this reality does not make Europe safer: it simply makes it less prepared.
The era in which “climate change” dictated industrial policy ended definitively about six weeks ago. Energy and resource security has returned to a priority place; the only unknown is how long it will take European leaders to acknowledge it openly.
– JOE GEFAEL via X