…[T]hanks to a combination of…President Biden’s horrific policies and a decades-long war against American-made energy, Americans find themselves begging foreign nations for oil and gasoline….
But what comes next will be even more embarrassing for the United States: President Biden will almost certainly ask the Chinese Communist Party to power up its refineries and ship refined petroleum products to America. And he will be willing to pay a high price for it, likely by removing hundreds, if not thousands, of tariffs that help American industry compete with cheap—and forced—Chinese labor….
U.S. refining capacity dropped by about 5 percent in the last two years alone…. The truth is that we’ve been on this trajectory for decades. More than half of all American refineries have closed since 1977, which was the last time a new major refinery came online.
That should not come as a surprise. Building refineries is capital-intensive, and for decades the industry has been under assault by radical environmentalists, sympathetic politicians, and increasingly woke investors….
Meanwhile,…China was rapidly positioning itself to be the world’s leading petroleum refiner—a goal it accomplished in 2020. At this moment, a third of China’s refining capacity sits idle…. But Beijing could easily flip a switch and begin exporting refined products around the globe to allies and adversaries alike—and make political and financial gains in the process.
President Biden is already preparing to talk with China’s Xi Jinping about easing U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods…. It only takes a little foresight to see how refined petroleum products may become part of the bargain.
Begging China for gasoline would be short-sighted, naïve, and disastrous for America. It would be a strategic coup for Xi, who wants nothing more than to signal China’s supremacy over the United States. And it would sink any hope of ever escaping economic reliance on the genocidal regime in Beijing.
Don’t be fooled by any talk about this being a short-term fix as we transition away from fossil fuels. That’s the same rhetoric that stifled investment in America’s refinery capacity to begin with. Moreover, it ignores the fact that we are already reliant on China for renewables….
Beijing has long pursued a strategic plan to dominate critical industries, and now America is playing catch-up. Instead of groveling to a Marxist regime determined to overtake our country, we should focus inward and send a signal that we welcome all American energy production, including oil and natural gas….
