Today, OPEC voted to cut oil production by 2 million barrels per day, even as the Biden administration has been begging them to pump more oil.
The implications of this are many, but I will stick to high-level fundamentals. If you mess with the market, people with profit interests will retaliate. If you cut the supply of any product for no reason other than wildly unpopular virtue signaling, consumers will feel it and act accordingly.
Biden tapped into our petroleum reserves to attempt to quell the soaring price of gasoline. Inflation and our swift retreat from energy independence caused the issue. It wasn't "Russia's war" or the pandemic. This policy has resulted in the depletion of our strategic reserves (bad) and a minor reduction in fuel costs (still bad). OPEC doesn't like the United States pumping more oil into the market as a short-term fix to a long-term political issue because it hurts the bottom line. Let's face it; the world still runs on oil, and it will for a long time.
We have to be honest here; it's a policy issue. Under President Trump, the United States was energy independent. If OPEC decided to slash production, it wasn't something that could impact us here in the States to the level that this rebuke to Biden would. Energy independence is crucial to our steady growth and survival in what can only be described as a tumultuous world (much of that tumult of our own making.)
Russia and Saudi Arabia are major players behind the OPEC decision. Biden needed them to keep output consistent because we aren't producing ourselves. That oil must come from somewhere, and it certainly isn't from the Keystone Pipeline. What are the chances the Biden administration will ever reverse course and open that major boon for citizens here in the United States? Zero.
The Biden administration has unfortunately demonstrated that the world doesn't respect us anymore. After heading out a few months ago to lobby Saudi Arabia to increase output to stem the political fallout at home, OPEC responded by raising output by 100,000 barrels. Many analysts viewed the trip as embarrassing, and it hurt more than it helped. What the Saudis did was akin to patting a groveling child on the head and handing him a small piece of candy. The decision today, when placed on the board with the rest of the chess pieces, is a firm rebuke of the West. That doesn't portend well for us, as we continue shipping billions of U.S. taxpayer funds to Ukraine and navigating through the Nord Stream issue. Not a good look for Biden or the U.S., especially after CNN has reported that in the past few days, the Biden administration has issued veiled threats to get their way on output.
This is what happens when you have a country run by radicals. American pocketbooks are being decimated by policy that doesn't follow any science or data. If we had a strong Republican leader in office or even a strong Republican congress, you can bet that we would still be pumping our tanks at around $2.00 a gallon.
So again, the problem is policy, and the midterms are right around the corner. OPEC's decision will be a significant blow to the Democrats just before the American people head out to vote, with inflation the number one issue affecting their decision-making. Further, this OPEC decision is an indictment of the United States' standing in the world, a standing being called into question under the direction of radical left democrats more concerned with gender ideology and social policy than keeping our country safe and our economy flourishing.
