Trump urges EU to boost US energy imports or face tariffs

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: Reuters

Trump urges EU to boost US energy imports or face tariffs
By Reuters

December 20, 2024 10:45 AM EST * Updated an hour ago


U.S. President-elect Donald Trump delivers remarks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., December 16, 2024. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo

Summary
* Trump says EU has tremendous trade deficit with the US
* Europe is already buying large chunk of US oil and gas
* US already exporting all the energy it doesn't consume at home
* EU says it is ready to discuss trade ties, including energy

Dec 20 (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said on Friday that the European Union, already the biggest buyer of U.S. energy, should step up U.S. oil and gas imports or face tariffs on the bloc's exports that include goods such as cars and machinery.

The EU already buys the lion's share of U.S. oil and gas exports, according to U.S. government data.

No extra volumes are currently available as the United States is exporting at capacity, but Trump has pledged to further grow the country's oil and gas production.

"I told the European Union that they must make up their tremendous deficit with the United States by the large-scale purchase of our oil and gas," Trump said in a post, opens new tab on Truth Social. ... Otherwise, it is TARIFFS all the way!!!," he added.

{snip}

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-says-eu-should-make-up-tremendous-deficit-with-us-by-purchasing-its-oil-2024-12-20/

[Ray Bruns]

1. Order eh? Who does he think he is?

[LT Barclay]

2. A mob boss running the usual racketeering and protection schemes

[mathematic]

4. ? Europe wants to buy more fossil fuels from us.

Trump is telling them to do a thing they already want to do. Europe wants to get off Russian fossil fuels. We should want to help them.

Trump has a habit of framing good things that are in everybody's interests as an adversarial demand and people just eat it up and get negatively polarized to it. Then when that good thing happens Trump takes credit for that good thing and the people that opposed it eat shit. It happened with NATO 2% defense funding (something NATO agreed to in 2014) and it'll happen with LNG and possibly other fossil fuels depending on how tariffs on canadian oil happen.

[William Seger]

3. He understands balance of trade about as well as he understands tariffs

... which is, not at all.

[2naSalit]

5. Ha!

They'll tell him to fuck off.

There's a big enough market in the EU and surrounding area right now since the war has shifted the resource allocations.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. A couple of things Reuters points out: net US-EU trade deficit is about $60 bn

ie the US buys, per capita, under $200 worth of goods/services (more goods flow from EU to USA; more services the other direction) more than it sells. That's not "tremendous"; it's about 0.2% of US GDP. And that is not, of course, just a flow of money; it's what is bought and sold on the free market.

And the second point is that it's the free market that determines how much oil and gas the EU buys from the USA, not EU governments. Trump is asking the EU to be all "state-controlled economy" and use public money to control its international trade - to benefit Trump's idea of economics.

What a maroon.