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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.
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.
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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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