The Parkview Letter · John Tamny
With Venezuela's Oil, Trump Is Doing Exactly As Conservatives Desire
As always, oil is essential to life and living standards. Just the same, the biggest oil companies in the world are government run. That's why conservatives historically revered "barren rocks" like Hong Kong over commodity rich countries. Governments can expropriate physical wealth, but they can't expropriate minds. The free market wing of the conservative base hit President Trump hard this week for the public/private oil partnership with Venezuela, but don't they doth protest too much? While they used to correctly point out the economic absurdity of "energy independence," in more modern times they've fallen for "Saudi America" and other economic banalities. "Energy independence," which fails logic and economics, became a thing to modern conservatives. With the Venezuela deal, Trump fed them.
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