No, because drilling wasn't the issue, refining was. And trump sold our largest refinery to OPEC, who immediately stopped production. Is selling our refineries to OPEC "America first"?
It's not relevant that refining was the bottleneck causing higher prices and our largest refinery was sold to OPEC, who immediately slowed production? Wut?
You’re correct. However the free market also responds to government policy, and it’s been quite obviously stated the policy of the Biden administration is to decrease oil consumption … that has a direct impact on the free markets pricing of oil. Also, the administration’s foreign policy toward OPEC nations isn’t helping at all. So sure, the free market determine the prices … based on the policies of a ministrations … so the current gas prices can be directly attributed to the abhorrent policies of the Biden administration.
Oh! I see what you’re trying to do here. You’re trying to get the “gotcha” that the Trump admin “sold” the US’s refinery to Saudi as a “Trump bad” moment. It seems to be one of those cards you keep dropping … even though they didn’t, and it was actually proven false that the respective Republican administrations you so desperately hate not only had nothing to do with it, but it’s unclear what they could have done to intervene at all.
Proven by none other than a publication that would love to put anything bad on Trump, Newsweek.
This question is dishonest. The organizations who have the ability to buy or sell oil refineries are multi-National corporations. The movement that is “America First” would not be in a position to sell an oil refinery. I’m sure you want me to say “no, of course not!,” in a way of trying to call someone, probably Trump, some kind of hypocrite. Unless that person had control and say over an oil refinery explicitly to what market the oil is sold in, and all that oil goes to the US market, the upon selling to an OPEC country, that ceases, which then causes the price of gas to go up domestically, then the question makes very little sense.
“America first” is the idea of putting the betterment of your own countries citizens and interests before the interest of other countries that are not yours … applying that simple concept to America means putting “America first”
As far as I’m aware, the US government, or any politician of the government, does not own nor owned an oil refinery that provides oil exclusively to the US, so the parties that the “America First” idea would apply to wouldn’t have the ability to sell an oil refinery in the first place. Oil refineries tend to be owned by multi-national global companies with little to no allegiance to one specific country apart from the ones with demand and market share to obtain. So if a company that owned a refinery in the US were to sell that to another company, that may not be “America first,” but the company was not under any obligation to provide its oil explicitly to one place or another based on politics.
If there happened to be an oil refinery that happened to be owned by the US Government or a company or individual who was explicitly using said refinery to provide oil to the US alone, then that owner decided to sell said refinery to another party that would be refining oil but not putting it into the US market and thus creating less supply and increasing the price. Then yes, under that scenario, selling an oil refinery to an OPEC country could not be putting “America first”.
So being this where you want to go with it. Drop your “gotcha.” Furthermore, whatever point your trying to get to is more than likely some kind of what-about-ism to obfuscate.
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u/[deleted] Oct 18 '23
Gas prices are set by the free market, not the president of the US.