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| Where've you been Long? For better than a week now they've been telling us that the reason for the decline in oil price was due to the Iranian export waivers to China, India, Turkey, etc.
But the question nobody has answered or even broached is why did the trump administration grant the waivers? China, India and Turkey announced weeks ago that they would continue to import Iranian crude but the US could have still levied sanctions. Instead, at the last minute, the US announced these waivers.
Were the waivers just a fig leaf to cover up the inevitable? A way for the US to save face, in the face of something that was going to happen anyhow?
Apparently both the Russians and Saudis ramped up production in anticipation of the sanctions and got caught seriously flat-footed by the waivers so when trump thanked the Saudis for pumping all that extra oil and keeping the price down, it wasn't so much by their design but their error. And apparently, they aren't happy about it so this oil glut won't last that long.
That still leaves the question of why grant the Chinese waivers? Did the trump administration realize at the last minute that an oil price shock would very likely send the world economy (& the US) into recession? If they're that concerned about recession (and they should be) does that mean they won't levy the next round of tariffs which very likely lead to recession? And if they can't levy the next round of tariffs does this mean they've effectively lost the tariff wars? | |
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Oil in the News (not political I promise)
