Shale boom seen as helping shape Trump foreign and trade policy
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Don't sleep on the shale boom as a force behind Trump 2.0's "disruptive" foreign and trade policies, a new essay argues.
Why it matters: The provocative Foreign Affairs piece calls the U.S. oil and gas export surge an "overlooked" driver of America's posture on the global stage that's "mostly unrelated to [President] Trump's particular preferences."
- These huge shipments abroad are a relatively recent thing that followed many years of growing imports.
The big picture: "Since then, the country has begun to behave less like a liberal hegemon and more like a classic petrostate," write UCLA political scientist Michael Ross and Georgetown geopolitics and justice professor Erik Voeten.
- When oil imports were much larger and rising, the U.S. "aligned with other energy-consuming countries in securing maritime trade routes, stabilizing markets, and supporting international institutions."
- "Now, like other top oil exporters, such as Russia and Saudi Arabia, the United States has lost its long-term interest in international cooperation and has become more willing to use the leverage gained by its production capacity to secure short-term concessions," they write.
The intrigue: Ross and Voeten are not making some kind of monocausal argument about what enabled MAGA's rise.
- They characterize Trump's trade wars, withdrawal from treaties and his "contempt" for traditional allies as rooted in his worldview and populist leanings.
- But they do fear that the relatively recent revival of America's petro-might is enabling the U.S. to seek near-term gains over long-term alliances.
State of play: It's not just a Trump thing, the essay states.
- It traces declining U.S. support for free trade to the shale boom that really took flight in the mid-2010s.
- They note former President Obama refused to appoint appellate judges to the WTO, "effectively crippling the body's dispute-resolution mechanism."
- They also point out former President Biden kept many Trump 1.0 tariffs in place and "adopted new protectionist industrial policies and export sanctions."
"The erosion of U.S. support for multilateral trade cooperation coincided with the shale boom," it states.
Zoom out: Whether they're on target or out to lunch, Ross and Voeten aren't the first analysts to start considering how the U.S. petro-boom is fundamentally changing the country's place on the world stage.
- Scholars with Columbia's energy think tank recently published a piece announcing the arrival of a "new form of energy bipolarity."
- The dividing line is between petro-states (notably the U.S., Russia and Saudi Arabia) and electro-states led by China and the EU that are racing ahead on renewables, EVs and grid tech.
The bottom line: "Energy dominance may seem like a boon for the future of American power, but unless the U.S. government shows more restraint, it could turn into a bust," Ross and Voeten write.
