Trump Tweets, OPEC Blinks

  • by David Blackmon
  • One Comment

    • The Evening Campaign Update

    (Because The Campaign Never Ends)

    Tired of all this Winning yet? – If you’ve been irritated by how much it’s cost you lately to fill your car with gasoline, well, cheer up.  President Trump is on the case.

    In fact, if you believe the folks at Bloomberg, he’s already caused the Saudis to blink and start working to get up to another 800,000 barrels of oil per day onto the global market in an effort to stabilize the price for crude oil at current or slightly lower levels.  Given that crude is the raw material from which gasoline is refined, a halt to the rapid rise in that commodity’s prices that has taken place in the last year will also stop the rise of the price at the pump.  Crude prices dropped more than $3.00/barrel (roughly 5%) on Friday in response to the Saudi/OPEC announcement of their intention.

    So, how did President Trump accomplish all of this?  Optically at least, he did it with a single tweet.  On April 20, the POTUS took to his famous Twitter feed to slam OPEC for the rapidly rising price of gasoline as Americans headed into the summer driving season:

    As Bloomberg reports, the Trump tweet produced an immediate reaction among the various OPEC ministers:

    OPEC officials were in a meeting at the opulent Ritz-Carlton hotel in Jeddah on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast when Trump tweeted his views and they immediately saw it as a significant intervention.

    “We were in the meeting in Jeddah, when we read the tweet,” OPEC Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo said on Friday. “I think I was prodded by his excellency Khalid Al-Falih that probably there was a need for us to respond,” he said. “We in OPEC always pride ourselves as friends of the United States.”

    Given that, unlike his immediate four predecessors in office, President Trump does not hesitate to lever negotiations over seemingly unrelated matters into one another, using all of the influence of the United States to obtain positive results, these OPEC countries also have developed a new-found sense of respect – likely bordering on fear – for expressions of concern coming from the U.S., even when they come from a Presidential tweet.  Perhaps even especially when they come from a Presidential tweet, come to think of it.

    Now, probably there was more to this new attitude suddenly being expressed by OPEC countries.  The Bloomberg story cites a recent congressional hearing covering proposed legislation that would attempt to make OPEC and other commodity cartels subject to the U.S. Sherman Anti-Trust Act, and there have likely been negotiations between U.S. and officials from Saudi Arabia and other OPEC nations taking place behind the scenes since April 20.   But there is no doubt at all the President’s tweet got this ball rolling.

    So, when you next go to fill up your car and notice that the price of unleaded has dropped a dime a gallon in response to Friday’s 5% drop in the price for crude oil, you know who to thank.

    Isn’t it nice to have a President who’s looking out for our interests instead of the interests of some nebulous “international community?”

    That is all.

    Follow me on Twitter at @GDBlackmon

    Today’s news moves at a faster pace than ever. Whatfinger.com is my go-to source for keeping up with all the latest events in real time.

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    guidvce4

    All it took was a “tweet”. The respect the rest of the world is beginning to show the US again is refreshing. The world is now aware that Trump is not anything like the previous president.
    I’m just grinning from ear to ear so much my face hurts. And, the left is going nuttier each time Trump tweets.
    Luv it. MAGA.

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