Joe Biden has banned oil and gas imports from Russia. New York Post. Biden framed it as an effort to damage the economy of Russia, which is heavily based on energy. Biden had faced bipartisan criticism for continuing to buy Russian oil after the invasion of Ukraine. However, he had been reluctant to do so due to the fact that it will increase gas prices. In 2021 Russia accounted for 8% of America's oil imports, though that number is probably smaller now as firms have been avoiding using Russian oil due to fears of a ban. The ban will cause oil and gasoline prices with conservative estimates being oil at $150 a barrel with Russia saying oil prices could raise to $300 or more.
My Comment:
This is a terrible move from Joe Biden's White House. I admit that it was hypocritical to keep buying oil from Russia but at the same time, it makes zero economic sense. It is going to cause massive spikes in oil and gas prices at a time when they are already at a record levels. It's the wrong move.
Despite that, I don't put this entirely on Biden. There were a lot of people on both the right and left that were calling for this. Those people are fools and in a just world they would be voted out of office as this is going to be devastating to the middle class and rural Americans.
Why? Because there is only so much driving you can cut. You can skip driving to your buddy's house but you can't stop driving to work or to the grocery store. Americans are dependent on their cars and if you take that away from them with these massive price spikes things start to fall apart.
The other problems is that pretty much every product that people buy is transported by trucks and trucks run on gasoline. Increasing gas prices means that every single physical thing that people buy will go up in price. Given that inflation is already out of control, largely because of Biden's policies, it's going to lead to an economic collapse. People are going to have to change their spending habits and that means that our economy is going to fail.
What is infuriating about this is there isn't a plan for getting oil from other sources. Biden has been sniffing around other despotic countries, like Venezuela and Iran, but has failed to secure a new source of oil. He's tried talking to Saudi Arabia and the UAE but they won't take his calls, probably because of the aforementioned Iran contacts.
Worst of all is the fact that Biden absolutely refuses to allow new drilling in the United States. The US has huge energy reserves but we aren't allowed to exploit them, thanks to the left and people like Biden. We were an net energy exporter under President Trump but that's all gone now.
I also have to say that it's hugely hypocritical to ban imports from Russia when Biden is trying to get gas from other countries that are as bad as Russia or even worse. Both Saudi Arabia and Iran are responsible for Yemen, which is at least as bad as Ukraine and probably worse given how many people have died there. At least Ukraine will likely end eventually, the Yemen conflict has lasted forever and doesn't look like it will end anytime soon. And Venezuela? Even if it was viable (and it's not due to neglect) it's hard to argue that Venezuela's people aren't worse off than Russians.
The worst part of this is that I doubt it will hurt Russia that much and even if it does they don't care. Putin is not motivated by profit, he's a Russian patriot and wants to secure his country for their future and his own legacy. And it's not like others won't be buying his fuel, Europe pretty much has to unless they want to kill their economy dead even more so than they have already. And China would love to have a nice gas deal with Russia. And given the higher prices they will probably actually make more money because of this, not less.
So in short, Biden is destroying our economy for little reason. Ukraine won't be helped by higher gas prices in anyway, nothing short of open warfare will help them now and that is thankfully off the table. It makes me wonder if the great reset conspiracy theory is real, tear down the economy and replace it with something else. But the other possibility is that Biden just hates American's middle class and rural citizens and wants to punish them...
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