David Goldwyn:
I don’t think that it is.
I mean, first, for President Trump, these tariffs are successful and that he’s raising an enormous amount of revenue. And so that was his goal and that’s happening. But all of that is coming out of the pockets of the American taxpayers, so I don’t really think it’s a win.
Also, the president’s tariff policy is a dagger pointed at the heart of his energy dominance policy, because first you’re punishing your primary markets in Europe and Asia by making their economies weaker, making it harder for them to export their goods. Second, you’re creating an enormous amount of distrust by bullying your allies into a very transactional approach.
I mean, the Europeans have had plenty of the use of energy as a tool of coercion from Russia. If the U.S. starts to look like it’s going to grant or withhold supplies depending on what it gets for issues unrelated even to energy, then the smart move for countries in Europe and Asia is going to be to diversify away from the U.S.
So I think it’s a very risky and destructive policy. And the third thing is that the tariffs are making the U.S. energy production, steel for pipes, copper for wires, the price of commodity inputs like copper, the price of even oil that we get from other countries, which is refined to make gasoline, all of that is becoming vastly more expensive because of the tariff policy and it’s undermining the energy dominance policy.
It’s no surprise that U.S. international energy companies like Exxon and Chevron are having their worst stock performance in years, worse than ever happened under the Biden administration, because of where prices are and because of where the economy is. So it’s a very Pyrrhic victory.
