US geopolitics led to oil prices increase

Donald Trump sent the oil market into a tailspin Monday with one tweet claiming oil prices are too high and blaming OPEC for it. Is Trump unaware that oil prices are a function of supply and demand? Or is he deliberately shifting the blame off his destructive embargo of Venezuela? Though it is a fact that oil prices are at a three month high, “Oil prices are getting too high,” is merely Donald Trump’s opinion. And calling the world “fragile” and suggesting higher oil prices would be some kind of catastrophe is an alarmist narrative.

Trump’s overly-dramatic tweet fits in nicely with the Goldman Sachs report from earlier today predicting that Brent Crude oil will go even higher to $75/bbl before the end of the year. But trying to scare up a panic over oil prices is a cry for attention from the sitting president, one that fits in with his television persona as a tough world negotiator.

And oil prices are determined by supply and demand. So they’re not “too high,” as Donald Trump avers. They’re at the level that reflects supply and demand. That includes a bill signed by President Obama in 2016 to station U.S. military boots on the ground in Nigeria, stirring up more armed conflict there. It also includes the Obama administration’s 2011 regime change intervention in Libya, backed by British and French intelligence, as well as U.S. air power. Oil prices are also higher than they would have been otherwise as a result of Donald Trump’s own half-baked geopolitical interventions as president of the United States. Most notably, the White House blockaded oil shipments to and from Venezuela with an embargo on Venezuelan oil last month.

Trump Pumps Fake Oil Price Crisis While Strangling Venezuelan Exports, CCN, Feb 26