CAROL ROTH: Climate extremists want to help China by hurting the US economy.
The move away from traditional energy also threatens the U.S.’s top exports. As of 2022, the U.S. was exporting around 3.6 million barrels per day of oil.
Arguably, our biggest export is U.S. dollars, which provides cheap financing for the U.S., particularly for the government and its unwieldy expansion. In 2022, the BIS (Bank for International Settlements, the central bank of central banks, so to speak) said, “The average turnover per day with the USD on one side of the transaction was $6.6 trillion.”
Moving away from traditional energy is weakening the dollar’s role in terms of global oil trading, meaning potentially less oil traded in U.S. dollars and fewer “petrodollars” to be plowed back into the U.S. Treasury market.
China is trying to capitalize on this as well, working to form stronger alliances with countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The hope is that this will move even more global trade away from the US’s highly entrenched position.
Having given up our manufacturing and wage edge to China, giving up our energy advantage is fiscally and otherwise irresponsible.
And China is counting on the short-sightedness of U.S. central planners to repeat their mistakes again.