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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   25504 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 18, 2024

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There's a model of Biden foreign policy that's very simple and predictive. I will present it in full.

"The foreign policy of the Biden administration is whatever will make the price of gasoline go down before the election."

It's super effective!

For example, what is Biden's policy towards Venezuela, a brutal dictatorship which is responsible for a large chunk of the U.S. border crisis, and which has threatened to seize the territory of neighboring Guyana? Why, ease the sanctions, of course.

What about Biden's position on Iran, a country which funds terror throughout the world, supports the Houthis in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and is rapidly progressing on its goal to build nuclear weapons? Why, ease the sanctions, of course.

But surely Russia, the Greatest Threat to Democracy Since Hitler, will feel the wrath of U.S. sanctions. We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars fighting them in Ukraine. We help send hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian men into the meat grinder to die. Because it's worth it. With stakes this high, there's no way that Biden would let his lust for cheap gasoline affect the conflict. Right, Anakin, right?

Today, Biden has urged Ukraine to stop its strikes on Russian oil infrastructure. It was causing gasoline futures to increase.

That's it boys. We've found the red line that Ukraine musn't cross. Biden is not very bright, and he's certainly lost a step. But an old dog still knows some tricks and he knows one. If you want to get re-elected you need cheap gas. As usual, the U.S. will support pretty much any tinpot dictator as long as they have oil. Sometimes, it really is that stupid.

If Biden wanted to reduce petrol prices, he wouldn't have banned keystone XL on day 1. January 20th, the first thing he did was block a pipeline. Then he put a moratorium on exploration in public lands. Just recently he froze export permits for natural gas (imagine being European at this point, trusting in an 'ally' that behaves like this).

Trump was genuinely pro-oil and gas, thus US oil production reached record highs under Biden due to delayed-action investment. But Biden has been relatively anti-fossil fuel.

Trump was genuinely pro-oil and gas, thus US oil production reached record highs under Biden due to delayed-action investment.

That's not at all evident in the data. It looks like we need to thank Obama for the upward trend in US oil production. That or people are overcrediting their favorite president for trends that are mostly driven by things other than US executive policy.

Hmm, on balance it looks like a rather complicated story of leases v permits by each president. There are of course non-executive factors involved, the fracking boom for one.

However, I maintain that Trump was more pro-fossil fuel than Biden. Oil companies voted with their pockets:

Little wonder that Trump Victory, the joint fundraising committee of Trump’s campaign and the RNC, has raked in $9.3m from fossil fuel donors in 2019-2020, while its counterpart Biden Victory has raised a meager $40,465 from fossil fuel donors in the same period, according to Open Secrets.

Bill Miller, a major industry lobbyist and consultant in Austin, told the Associated Press that while many fossil fuel companies were hurt by the pandemic, parts of the industry had begun to recover. “It’s the kind of industry that remembers their friends through thick and thin, and Trump is their friend.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/09/big-oil-trump-campaign-donations-fossil-fuel-industry

Biden's environmental and foreign policy goals are entirely subservient to the price of gasoline.

For example, in 2022, when oil was over $100/barrel the Biden administration was chiding U.S. producers for not drilling more. That's when the administration decided to sell about 50% of the strategic petroleum reserve to lower prices before the midterms.

On the other hand, it's unclear if Keystone would lower U.S. pump prices at all. It was mostly designed to connect Canadian production with U.S. Gulf Coast ports.

Just recently he froze export permits for natural gas

This is a great example that demonstrates my model. Freezing exports lowers U.S. natural gas prices, prioritizing cheap energy for U.S. voters at the cost of foreign relations with allies. U.S. natural gas is the cheapest it has ever been.

Note that none of this makes Biden "pro oil and gas". He doesn't want energy producers making money. He just wants cheap gas before the election, whether it comes from Russia, Venezuela, Iran, or the Permian.

Use my model and U.S. foreign policy makes a lot more sense.

That's when the administration decided to sell about 50% of the strategic petroleum reserve to lower prices before the midterms.

To be fair to Biden, this was actually a good use of reserves as he sold high and then refilled it at a lower price

At the very least, this is a case of a stopped clock being right once

EDIT: I accept the correction below.

To be fair to Biden, this was actually a good use of reserves as he sold high and then refilled it at a lower price.

That's fake news unfortunately.

The SPR has NOT been refilled. There were some trivial purchases but you can barely seem them on the graph: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=mcsstus1&f=m

The major sales came to a conclusion after the midterms, but they were still draining the SPR until May of 2023, with prices below $80/barrel.

It’s also possible that supporting a small increase in the price of gas is political digestible but having gas prices get back to 4 dollars a gallon is it

Note that blocking Keystone was explicitly about getting Americans to stop using oil:

(d) The Keystone XL pipeline disserves the U.S. national interest. The United States and the world face a climate crisis. That crisis must be met with action on a scale and at a speed commensurate with the need to avoid setting the world on a dangerous, potentially catastrophic, climate trajectory. At home, we will combat the crisis with an ambitious plan to build back better, designed to both reduce harmful emissions and create good clean-energy jobs. Our domestic efforts must go hand in hand with U.S. diplomatic engagement. Because most greenhouse gas emissions originate beyond our borders, such engagement is more necessary and urgent than ever. The United States must be in a position to exercise vigorous climate leadership in order to achieve a significant increase in global climate action and put the world on a sustainable climate pathway. Leaving the Keystone XL pipeline permit in place would not be consistent with my Administration's economic and climate imperatives.

More recently, he celebrated blocking Russian oil as part of an overarching strategy to force people to stop using oil:

Biden added, though, that the crisis "should motivate" the United States to "accelerate the transition to clean energy." For American families, though, Biden admitted investments in clean energy "will not lower energy prices for families," but said that transforming the economy to "run on electric vehicles powered by clean energy with tax credits to help American families winterize their homes, and use less energy, that will help." "If we do what we can, it will mean that no one has to worry about the price of gas in the future," Biden said.

The administration has been very clear that it is important to get Americans to stop using so much oil and one of the ways to do that is to constrict the supply. You probably won't hear this rhetoric much during the election, but it's not exactly been some secret plot.

Yes, I agree that his rhetoric and actions don't match up. That's kind of my point.

Keep in mind that Russian oil isn't blocked, nor is the U.S. trying to block it. They are trying to "price cap" Russian oil - allowing Russia to sell it but hopefully make less money. Success has been mixed at best. Oil and gasoline are fungible and globally traded. So even if we don't buy Russian oil directly it keeps prices low.

And how would you explain Biden telling Ukraine to stop bombing refineries?

There are certain actions, like massive subsidies for EV's, can achieve Biden's decarbonization goal while ALSO lowering gas prices. This is fully compatible with my model. I believe that Biden does care somewhat about the environment and foreign relations.

But when the administration must choose, they choose lower gas prices every time.

They choose lower gas prices in proximity to elections, sure. It's a cynical strategy, but a common one.

Note that both of us are using "they" in a fashion that isn't actually how these things work. When we talk about "the Biden Administration", this shorthand misses that there are actors with conflicting interests in the administration. Without even being overly cynical about Biden's current mental capacity, there's just no way for a President to be personally invested in the details of every policy that they're signing off on. Adding this internal conflict into the picture explains why there are policies that are clearly intended (and even stated!) to be kneecapping American energy production while other policies try to create short-run stopgaps that avoid Americans getting too wound up about $5/gallon gas.

The export permits for natural gas thing was retaliation for Texas’s defiance at the border, and the rest of it was before the rise in oil prices.

When Biden entered office in January 2021, oil prices were like $50/bbl, historically cheap and well below the point at which you might lose an election because of expensive oil. Dems don’t - as you note wrt the change under Trump - always prioritize oil price, and will push through environmentalist policies where they can. But if oil is at $90/bbl after having been low for a while, for the politically capable ones (and Biden is or was such an operator), cheaper oil temporarily overtakes global warming in priority since it might prevent an actual election defeat.

And to steelman Biden here, there's an argument that goes something like this:

"I want to help the environment, but I can't do that if I lose the election, therefore I have to hurt the environment temporarily to win the election".

Taken to its logical conclusion, this argument is a fully generalizable superweapon to anything you want. But in this case, it's probably fair enough.

Sure which is pretty shitty. Pretend to be for A to trick the voters so you can do B.

I do not think it is particularly shitty. If Biden was making campaign promises of keeping the price of gas low, with no intend to keep them, that would be shitty. Instead, this is just an election gift targeting that part of the population which is still undecided. My model of the world says "At least 90% of the US voters are aware of the fact that Trump is more pro oil than Biden". But most voters are not perfectly rational beings who carefully consider the terms of slowing climate change with having to pay more for gas in their utility and then vote for whomever is more likely to satisfy their preferences over the next term.

It is common knowledge that advertisements use hot people because they make ads work better than ads with median people in them. In a perfectly rational world, everyone would adjust for that whenever they see an ad with a hot person in it and there would be no advantage left to such ads. This is not the world we live in because most people don't work that way.

Yes. Environmental goals come with serious tradeoffs. The path to decarbonization will be difficult and make us poorer. The climate activists understand that and are fine with that. But most voters are not.

There is a propaganda effort to make it seem that there are no tradeoffs, that EV's and solar panels will make use richer and Create Jobs. It's simply not true.

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