In his Wednesday evening speech to announce to the American people the continuation and potential intensification of his war against Iran, President Donald Trump conceded that as far as oil is concerned the war will bring no benefit for Americans. Instead, he said he is undertaking the war just to help “allies.”
Tag: oil
Back in 2022, media was reporting on people affixing to gas pumps stickers with a photo of then President Joe Biden pointing toward the gas price display on the gas pumps. The text “I DID THAT!” prominently accompanied the photo on the stickers. People putting the stickers on gas pumps sought to emphasize the judgment that Biden was responsible for the gas price increasing. It looks like those stickers could be making a comeback, with the photo of Biden replaced with one of the current president — Donald Trump.
Interviewed Tuesday at Bloomberg, Saudi Arabia Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan indicated that Saudi Arabia would be open to conducting trade, including involving oil, in various currencies — mentioning in particular the euro and the Saudi riyal — instead of the United States dollar. This is the latest in a series of developments suggesting the Middle East nation and large oil producer is shifting away from supporting US dollar hegemony through trade.
In February of 2006, then US House of Representatives member Ron Paul (R-TX) discussed the history of US dollar hegemony and its looming doom in a House floor speech titled “The End of Dollar Hegemony.” Paul began his speech with his assessment that the dollar dominance, called dollar hegemony more recently and dollar diplomacy in earlier decades of the prior hundred years, “is coming to an end.”
The full history and analysis Paul related in the speech is fascinating. But, there is a particular portion of Paul’s speech that relates to the Saudi finance minister’s comment. This is when Paul focused on the key role the trade of oil has played in supporting dollar hegemony and the related position of the US dollar as the world reserve currency.
In March of 2003, as the United States military prepared for its imminent invasion of Iraq, Paul Wolfowitz suggested to US Congress members that the US would not foot the bill for rebuilding Iraq after the devastation the US invasion would bring to the country. Wolfowitz, who was then deputy secretary of defense, assured Congress members that Iraq, through its oil revenue, could pay for its own reconstruction.
Seventeen votes from among 433 United States House of Representatives members. That is all the support for peace or free trade with Russia that was on display in the House on Wednesday when the House passed the Suspending Energy Imports from Russia Act (HR 6968) by a vote of 414 to 17, with two members not voting.
Protecting Syrian oil that accounts for just 0.2 percent of world reserves is not the reason United States troops are staying in Syria, argues retired Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson in a new interview at MSNBC. Instead, says Wilkerson, who was chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell in the George W. Bush administration, the offered oil protection rationale is a “manufactured reason.”