Trump’s Energy Dominance Gives Way to Incoherence
There are better ways to shock-proof America than asking Russia for help and rolling back efficiency.
Not so unleashed after all.
Photographer: Bloomberg/BloombergThe long arc of the American dream of energy independence, having recently soared Icarus-like toward energy dominance, has finally crashed ignominiously into energy incoherence.
Since early on in his term, President Donald Trump has boasted about U.S. fossil fuels giving him the whip hand. Yet there was a fatal flaw in his cunning plan: The domestic industries backing him weren’t quite up to the job. Coal policy has been one long exercise in white-boarding ways of forcing the market by fiat to take more of something it manifestly doesn’t want. With oil and gas, freedom fracks turned out to rest on the unconditional support of capital markets — and the latter now have some rather exacting conditions.