Three Key Energy Moves Trump Plans For His First 100 Days

Authored by Simon Watkins via OilPrice.com,

  • Trump plans to prioritize increasing U.S. oil and gas production by removing federal drilling restrictions, which could lead to lower energy prices.

  • Trump may look to negotiate an end to the Russia-Ukraine war with a settlement that secures disputed regions for Russia.

  • Trump is likely to support Israel in taking action against Iran’s nuclear program, aiming to strengthen U.S.-Middle East alliances and counter China’s influence in the region.

Crucially for President-Elect Donald Trump’s second term in office, he will have considerable personal influence over the Senate (in which his Republican Party now holds a majority), and over the Supreme Court (where conservatives hold a six-to-three majority). His Party – and few can argue that it is now truly that – has also now secured a majority in the second of the two institutions of Congress, the House of Representatives, giving the re-elected President will have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to push through whatever legislation he wants, especially in the traditional honeymoon period of the first 100 days in office.

Three areas that he is likely to address in this period will have enormous ramifications for the global energy sector and the key countries that constitute its core.

One of these areas will be moves to increase the U.S.’s oil and gas production, as stated in several of Trump’s campaign speeches and documented in his ‘Trump Agenda47’.

Broadly, he will, “…set a national goal of ensuring that America has the No. 1 lowest cost of energy of any industrial country anywhere on Earth”. He added that to “keep pace with the world economy that depends on fossil fuels for more than 80 percent of its energy, President Trump will DRILL, BABY, DRILL”. He also highlights that he will, “end Biden’s delays in federal drilling permits and leases that are needed to unleash American oil and natural gas production”. This is likely to include the removal of much of the previous Presidential Administration’s pausing of key liquefied natural gas export permits. The likely net effect of this on oil and gas prices will clearly be bearish.

Another move Trump is likely to make in the first 100 days will be pushing for a negotiated settlement in the Russia-Ukraine War.

During his campaigning, the President-Elect repeatedly stated that he could end the war “in 24 hours” based on two key dealmaking tactics delineated in an interview with Fox News in July 2023. First, he would tell Russian President Vladimir Putin that if he did not make a deal with Ukraine then the U.S. would dramatically increase the scale and scope of its aid to the war-torn country. As a senior global security source who worked closely with Trump’s first Presidential Administration exclusively told OilPrice.com last week, this would include long-range sophisticated missiles being given to Kyiv and the permission to use them deep inside Russian territory that was ‘active’ in its war against Ukraine. Second, he would tell Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that the U.S. would withhold all aid to it unless Kyiv negotiated a deal with Moscow. The starting point for the deal itself that Trump has in mind, according to the source, is one in which Russia retains the original disputed territories of Luhansk and Donetsk, in addition to keeping Crimea which was annexed during the 2014 invasion. The other major territories in the southeast – Kherson and Zaporizhzhia – plus other areas in the northeast occupied by Russian forces, would form part of a demilitarised zone between the two nations.

Trump can see an additional benefit in this plan, which is based on the premise of countries ultimately being responsible for ensuring their own security. This is that the European countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) will infer from it that they must finally assume more of the spending burden of the security alliance with the U.S. to ensure the defence of their own borders. Trump has long made it clear that he thinks European countries should spend at least 2.5% of their annual gross domestic product (GDP) on defence, with the U.S. having spent 3.6% of GDP in this way last year. Over the same period, only Greece managed this minimum 2.5% requirement (at 3.23%) with Great Britain second (at 2.33%). The longstanding de facto economic leader of the European Union of 27 countries was near the bottom of the list, at just 1.52%.

That said, the combination of a negotiated settlement ending the Russia-Ukraine War and the implicit obligation to spend at least 2.5% of GDP on defence every year might prompt a gradual fracturing in the already uneasy political cohesion of the European Union towards punishing Russia for its aggression against Ukraine. Many European economies have buckled in recent years from the effects of Covid, surging inflation caused by soaring energy prices after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and competition from China in key sectors. These elements may convince any new German government (following the recent collapse of its governing coalition) that resuming the cheap and plentiful supplies of energy from Russia upon which it built much of its economic wealth over the previous two decades is a necessary step to its financial recovery. Russia, for its part, will be more than happy to accommodate it, beginning with the extension of gas exports to Europe via Ukraine at the end of this year.

The third measure that Trump is likely to take in his first 100 days as President will be giving the nod to Israel to do whatever it wants with Iran.

It should be remembered that it was Trump’s belief that Iran was using the ‘Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action’ (JCPOA, or colloquially ‘the nuclear deal’) cynically to quietly build up its nuclear weapons programme from money accrued through increased trade and investment made possible by the deal, as analysed in full in my latest book on the new global oil market order. That was why the U.S. unilaterally pulled out of the deal in May 2018. It was also Trump who said on 4 October that “Israel should hit the [Iranian] nuclear [facilities] first and worry about the rest later.” He added – in response to Biden’s flat ‘no’ on Israel striking Iran’s nuclear sites — “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. That’s the biggest risk we have. The biggest risk we have is nuclear … Soon they’re going to have nuclear weapons. And then you’re going to have problems.” Removing – or at least severely downgrading – Iran’s nuclear threat would allow the Trump Presidential Administration to reassert its authority with several major Arab states, most notably Iran’s historical nemesis in the region, Saudi Arabia. This could be done through the re-start of the relationship normalisation deals that the previous Trump government orchestrated between Arab states and Washington’s principal Middle Eastern ally Israel that began in 2020 with the UAE, as also detailed in my latest book. The resuscitation of these types of deals is something Trump has already signaled as being a key priority for his new Administration. Doing this, in the aftermath of a major Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear weapons development programme, would have the corollary benefit for Trump of derailing China’s efforts since 2018 especially to replace the U.S. as the leading superpower in the vital global oil and gas region of the Middle East. It would also enable the U.S. to resume the sort of cooperation with Saudi Arabia and OPEC that kept oil price within the ‘Trump Oil Price Range’ for virtually the entirety of his previous presidential term.

Loading…


Originally Posted at; https://www.zerohedge.com//


Related Posts

Taxpayer Funded Censorship: How Government Is Using Your Tax Dollars To Silence Your Voice

Taxpayer Funded Censorship: How Government Is Using Your Tax Dollars To Silence Your Voice

Submitted by Open the Books

Campaign season brought with it a steady stream of accusations that various parties and platforms were spreading misinformation and disinformation.

Most recently, the scandals at FEMA over avoiding homes with Trump signs was quickly slapped with a “misinformation” label…until FEMA itself admitted it had happened. MSNBC anchor Jen Psaki suggested “laws have to change” to combat the scourge.

With the misinformation category being weaponized across the political spectrum, we took a look at how invested government has become in studying and “combatting” it using your tax dollars. That research can provide the intellectual ammunition to censor people online.

Since 2021, the Biden-Harris administration has spent $267 million on research grants with the term “misinformation” in the proposal.

Of course, the Covid pandemic was the driving force behind so much of the misinformation debate. Sure enough, the feds have spent at least $127 million in grants specifically targeted to study the spread of “misinformation” — or to help people “overcome” it, so to speak — by persuading them to go along with Covid-related public health recommendations and mandates.

In one particularly brazen instance, $200,000 was spent slandering President-elect Trump himself. The grant resulted in a paper suggesting populist leaders and movements in various countries kept people from coming together in “solidarity” and public officials need to have the “main say” on health guidance next time.

In other words, it would be better if your voice were silenced in favor of the “expert” class.

BACKGROUND

The COVID-19 pandemic instigated a rush of funding for research and projects addressing misinformation. At the time bureaucrats like Anthony Fauci contended that false information spread online undermined scientific recommendations coming from the government. Many of those government recommendations—vaccines for children, masking and double masking, and six feet for social distancing—have since been found to have dubious scientific basis.

The federal government used both carrots and sticks, in the form of grants and censorious pressure campaigns, in the name of combating COVID misinformation. At the same time, it was working hand in glove with social media companies to silence critics of repressive COVID-19 policies.

There is robust documentation by now proving that the Biden-Harris administration worked closely with social media companies to censor content deemed “misinformation,” which often included cases where people simply questioned or disagreed with the Administration’s COVID policies.

Earlier this year the Supreme Court ruled that such activities did not violate the First Amendment, but Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted such pressure was “wrong;” Tesla CEO Elon Musk purchased Twitter (now X) in part because of the company’s extreme restrictions on speech during COVID.

In February the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government issued a scathing report against the National Science Foundation (NSF) for funding grants supporting tools and processes that censor online speech.

The report said, “the purpose of these taxpayer-funded projects is to develop artificial intelligence (AI)-powered censorship and propaganda tools that can be used by governments and Big Tech to shape public opinion by restricting certain viewpoints or promoting others.” $13 million was spent on the censorious technologies profiled in the report.

While the NSF was singled out for particularly egregious ideology-driven behavior, the full universe of misinformation-related spending in the federal government is much larger and goes far beyond colluding with the tech sector to restrict opinions online.

Federal spending records show at least $127 million tax dollars funding anti-misinformation efforts directly related to COVID-19 for a variety of activities, from on-the-ground advocacy working to dispel vaccine misinformation, to scientific studies on how supposed misinformation is spread online.

The result of all this was a record loss of trust in science and government and compounding economic and social disasters that may never be able to be fully quantified.

Learning to think critically and discern truth from lies is an important life skill, but the federal government has proven it is not capable of addressing that need responsibly. It’s the worst possible arbiter of truth, as it were, because it makes the state a gatekeeper of speech.

BY THE NUMBERS

Misinformation-related grants actually stretch back to FY2017 during the first Trump presidency. $273 million has been awarded for grant proposals containing the term since then—but there was an explosion of cash during the years-long Covid malaise. The vast majority of that figure ($267 million) was for grants that began in 2021 or later.

METHODOLOGY NOTE: This likely does not cover all grants given to combat misinformation, because transaction descriptions may not include this keyword, but the trend in spending illustrates a sudden explosion of interest in misinformation starting in 2021.

An enormous year-over-year jump in new grants occurred between 2020 and 2021—from $2.2 million to $126 million as the federal government poured money out to address COVID-related “misinformation,” among other projects.

While spending has since slowed down, it is still far higher than it was pre-pandemic in 2020: $18.3 million in new grants began in FY 2024.

Grants mostly came from the Department of Health and Human Services ($185 million), followed by the National Science Foundation ($65 million), with the Department of State ($12 million) in a distant third. CHART: Click here for a breakdown of misinformation spending by agency.

An additional $17 million has awarded to misinformation-related contracts since 2020, and again, most of it ($12.5 million) was in FY 2021.

WHAT IS MISINFORMATION, ANYWAY?

According to the Department of Health and Human Services website:

“Misinformation is information that is false, inaccurate, or misleading according to the best available evidence at the time.”

The website goes on to detail supposed issues with COVID-19 related misinformation:

“During the pandemic, health misinformation has led people to decline vaccines, reject public health measures, and use unproven treatments. Health misinformation has also led to harassment and violence against health workers, airline staff, and other frontline workers tasked with communicating evolving public health measures.”

These definitions leave a lot of room for interpretation and abuse—who decides what the “best available evidence” is at any given time? And who decides which experts should be considered authoritative or not?

Famously, then-National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Disease director Anthony Fauci promoted the notion that people should stand six feet apart from each other to achieve “social distancing” to reduce COVID transmission.

In January of 2024 Fauci would admit to Congress that this recommendation had no scientific basis and “sort of just appeared.”

The six feet social distancing rule was used to justify extended school and business closures, wreaking economic havoc and leading to tremendous learning losses for children.

BACK TO THE START: MISINFO SPENDING UNDER TRUMP

Before most of the furor, the Trump administration granted about $6.7 million in funding related to misinformation, the bulk of which were awarded in FY 2019 and 2020. Most of these grants—12 of the 16 total—funded technological developments to monitor social media and flag misinformation.

The earliest one of these was awarded in 2017: $316,000 from National Science Foundation for “training computers and humans to detect misinformation by combining computational and theoretical analysis.”

No such grants were given out domestically in 2018, but in 2019 over $2 million were awarded for projects with titles like “Online Dynamics of Misinformation” and “Social Media and Mass Communication: Curriculum Development to Combat Misinformation.”

Spending stayed about the same at $1.7 million in FY 2020 for six projects, including two that directly address COVID:

  • $149,858 from National Science Foundation for “tracking and network analysis of the spread of misinformation regarding COVID-19.”

  • $104,491 from National Science Foundation for “countering COVID-19 misinformation via situation-aware visually informed treatment.”

While this spending is a drop in the bucket for what was to come, the censorious ideology behind “misinformation” grants which were abused during the Biden-Harris administration first got traction under Trump.

NEXT STEPS: CASH TO FIGHT COVID MISINFO

When examining the number of projects on misinformation, most did not specifically relate to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many involved misinformation concerning HIV, the HPV vaccine, or the opioid epidemic, for instance. Multiple projects also addressed more obscure topics, like this $234,401 grant to “combat misinformation that negatively impacts public perception of crabbing and the commercial fishing industry.”

But dollar for dollar, $127 million was directly related to COVID.

Projects receiving funding generally comprised two categories:

  • Public-interfacing programs meant to mitigate the supposed impact of misinformation through on-the-ground advocacy

  • Scientific studies or conferences on how misinformation is spread

ON-THE-GROUND ADVOCACY

The federal government pumped millions of dollars into on-the-ground campaigns to “dispel” misinformation and convince people to take COVID-19 vaccines or otherwise comply with COVID policies. Some examples include:

  • $80,092,486, Department of Health and Human Services, National Foundation for the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, to build a network of nonprofits through which to disperse materials about COVID and flu vaccines. Project goals include “the design, development, and management of a searchable repository platform to house a multi-lingual inventory of communication materials and tools to support collaborative efforts to increase adult immunization.”

  • $2,000,000, Department of Health and Human Services, Durham County, NC. Proposed activities include “a mass media campaign, SMS distribution of health messaging, out-of-home advertising within targeted geofencing, coordinating existing networks of community health workers, expanding peer advocacy programs to address vaccine hesitancy, outreach to address health-related misinformation, mini-grants for native content development with accurate health messages, and a digital learning community to advance organizational health literacy.”

  • $1,293,614, Department of Health and Human Services, University of Iowa. To leverage trusted community members to address “disparities in COVID testing and vaccine uptake.”

Other grants were revised to add an anti-misinformation component. For example, $150,000 was added to a $1.2 million grant from the Corporation for National and Community Service (also known as AmeriCorps) to nonprofit Seeds 4 Success.

The original grant was to connect “foster grandparents” to children to serve as tutors and mentors. The revision stated the foster grandparent program will instead “dispel misinformation about COVID vaccination and help [the target community] see the benefits, especially vaccinating children when eligible, and help maximize contract tracing resources to ensure safety of the families we serve.”

MISINFORMATION STUDIES

Other funding went to researchers seeking to understand how supposed misinformation is shared online and how it can be combatted or mitigated using social or technological tools. Universities were often the recipient of such research spending.

Although much of this research is academic, it is often intended to lay the groundwork for public interventions.

Examples include:

  • $2,356,413, Department of Health and Human Services, University of Pennsylvania, for “investigating and identifying the heterogeneity in COVID-19 misinformation exposure on social media among black and rural communities to inform precision public health messaging” because “misinformation contributes to confusion, distrust, and distress around health behaviors such as vaccination, mask wearing, and social distancing.” In other words, they wanted to find the different messages and media various communities were receiving in order to tailor the government’s rebuttal.

  • $2,175,835, Department of Health and Human Services, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, for research on the “social processes and cognitive factors underlying misinformation comprehension” in social media. By developing an algorithm to automatically detect “intent and belief attributes underlying COVID-19 misinformation” researchers can develop computational infrastructure to mitigate the spread of that misinformation “easing public health burden and informing policy regulations as needed.”

  • $348,310, Department of Health and Human Services, Michigan State University, “to counteract the negative impact of misinformation on digital platforms that threatens public health.” The overall goal of the project is “to develop a publicly accessible vaccine informatics system to track vaccine debate, and to test the impact of vaccine debate… during the onset of a global pandemic.”

OTHER GRANT EXAMPLES

$200,000 to Slander a Political Opponent

One notable research grant awarded to George Washington University in FY 2022 targeted former president Donald Trump. The study, called “Pandemic Communication in Time of Populism: Building Resilient Media and Ensuring Effective Pandemic Communication in Divided Societies” received a $199,516 grant from the National Science Foundation.

Researchers on this Biden-era grant examined how so-called “populist” leaders supposedly prevented society from coming together in “solidarity” during the COVID pandemic. Trump’s presidency was a focus of the research, along with the leaders of three other countries.

One researcher said in a video interview:

“What went wrong in different ways in all these countries and in a lot of countries around the world that had populist governments…there was just this very high level of polarization and politicization of the pandemic response…and it really interfered with the ability of society to pull together in a consistent way and to get through the pandemic.”

The research also concluded that “experts” should have the “main say” during the next public health crisis, with another investigator saying:

“One of the recommendations stemming from our strand is related to who is in charge of disseminating information related to the public health crisis, in our view based on the data that we have, it’s obvious that governments should allow the experts to have the main say in how society should respond to public health crisis.”

At the end of the video “climate change” is the next crisis these experts suggest requires strong public solidarity that populist leaders are incapable of creating.

WILL THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES THEMSELVES SPREAD MISINFORMATION?

In a similar vein, $994,950 was awarded from the National Science Foundation to the National Academies of Science on “Understanding and Addressing Misinformation about Science.” This report was needed because, according to the grant description, “concern about the spread of misinformation and its role in undermining scientific expertise and facts in civic dialogue has grown significantly, especially over the last 5-10 years.”

The report has yet to be published, but there is reason to suspect it will also lack introspection from its supposed expert panel of researchers.

The chair of the research committee, Kasisomayajula Viswanath also worked on the report “Communication Strategies for Building October Confidence in COVID-19 Vaccines: Addressing 2021 Variants and Childhood Vaccinations.”

Viswanath said at the time to “continue to emphasize [to parents] how safe the vaccines are and how they are effective in preventing serious disease. More than 6 billion doses of vaccines have been given globally so far with very few serious adverse effects.”

But as the New York Times reported in February 2024, many other countries no longer recommend or even offer COVID-19 vaccinations or boosters for children.

The New York Times article suggested that U.S. Center for Disease Control’s recommendation for childhood vaccination diminishes the agency’s credibility, because, as other countries have concluded, the benefits of childhood COVID vaccines do not outweigh the costs.

It remains to be seen if this misstep in COVID policy will be a part of the new $1 million report on how misinformation erodes public faith in “scientific expertise.”

MISINFORMATION CONTRACT SPENDING

As we’ve illustrated, public grants focused on “dispelling” misinformation with supposedly accurate information in order to coerce people into compliance with health policy directives.

But beginning in 2020, contracts were often concerned with monitoring or eliminating supposed misinformation at its source.

Because contract descriptions are frequently vague, it is unclear how many are directly related to COVID-19. Only one explicitly mentioned the pandemic in its contract transaction description.

Examples of these misinformation contracts include:

  • $300,000, Department of Health and Human Services, Innov8AI, “capturing medical misinformation in social media for targeted interdiction using an advanced AI solution set.” [Interdiction means “to forbid in a usually formal or authoritative manner,” according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary.]
  • $300,000, Department of Health and Human Services, Melax Technologies, “real-time surveillance of vaccine misinformation from social media platforms using ontology and natural language processing technologies.” In other words, Melax would sort posts it deemed “misinformation” into categories to analyze.
  • $299,964, Department of Health and Human Services, Gryphon Scientific, “systematic understanding and elimination of misinformation online.”

Other contracts raised eyebrows for different reasons:

  • $1,205,826 from Department of Homeland Security went to defense contractor  Guidehouse for “misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation analysis.”

NOTE: Malinformation is a controversial term for information that is true, but presented without sufficient context in a way that could mislead or harm. The opportunity to use this word to censor political or ideological opponents should be obvious.

  • As first reported in the Daily Caller, Meedan Inc received $749,974 from the National Science Foundation’s Convergence Accelerator in 2022 for “FACT CHAMP: fact-checker, academic, and community collaboration tools combating hate, abuse, and misinformation with minority led partnerships,” later re-branded as Co-Insights.

The non-profit went on to receive $5 million more from NSF for the same project a year later.

A press release states the project will “narrow the gap between research into misinformation and responses designed to curb it.”

CONCLUSION

In October the House Committee on Energy & Commerce’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations published a report outlining nearly $1 billion in spending on a vaccine promotional campaign. Despite this huge expenditure, the report notes that “the Campaign and the Biden Harris administration’s response to the pandemic resulted in a collapse of the public’s trust in public health messaging.” Report authors blamed flawed messaging about the effectiveness of masks, overstating the risk of COVID to children, and recommending vaccinations for all Americans over the age of 6 months.

It appears the administration most concerned with “misinformation” itself trafficked in misinformation: on masks, on risks to children, on social distancing, and on the need to vaccinate even infants. At least one grant specifically targeted the sitting president’s main political rival.

Americans simply cannot trust that continued grant and contract spending and various bureaucratic programmatic activities involved in “misinformation” will not be ideologically motivated to silence critics.

Case in point: a $249,691 grant from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services to the University of Washington to build and deploy an “online escape room hosted by librarians” to address misinformation. The grant also included a co-design camp around the far-left Black Lives Matter movement to “demonstrate use of the design kit for creating interest-driven escape rooms.” (Play the escape room here.)

How much more misinformation spending is purely ideological or promoting contested or even false information?

No doubt the internet is awash with patently false information that can confuse and needlessly alarm readers. So far it has been proven, however, that the federal government is not capable of addressing this issue objectively. It would be better to stop entirely than further undermine federal credibility with accusations of partisanship and First Amendment rights violations.

The incoming Trump administration must end the government’s involvement in managing so-called misinformation, and Congress must keep the purse strings closed on this spending.

Otherwise, taxpayers remain at risk of underwriting their own censorship.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 11/23/2024 – 23:20

Here’s How People Are “Not Being Forced Off Their Land” in North Carolina

by Daisy Luther, The Organic Prepper: Put yourself into this (fictional) scenario. Your adrenaline is still pumping through your veins at an astounding pace after the mud came down the mountain and pushed your house, your truck, and your garage right off of their foundations and out of sight. Despite the chaos and ruin, you feel lucky. […]

You Missed

Taxpayer Funded Censorship: How Government Is Using Your Tax Dollars To Silence Your Voice

Taxpayer Funded Censorship: How Government Is Using Your Tax Dollars To Silence Your Voice

Here’s How People Are “Not Being Forced Off Their Land” in North Carolina

Here’s How People Are “Not Being Forced Off Their Land” in North Carolina

With Or Without Tariffs, The US Dollar Is A Ponzi

With Or Without Tariffs, The US Dollar Is A Ponzi

‘State-sanctioned sexual assault’: Trans cops allowed to strip-search women in the UK

‘State-sanctioned sexual assault’: Trans cops allowed to strip-search women in the UK

Politicians for the people

Politicians for the people

4 Things Men Want In A Relationship (And Rarely Get)

4 Things Men Want In A Relationship (And Rarely Get)