by Donald Trump
Call me old school, but I believe in the old warrior’s credo that “to the victor go the spoils.” In other words, we don’t fight a war, hand over the keys to people who hate us, and leave. We win a war, take the oil to repay the financial costs we’ve incurred, and in so doing, treat Iraq and everybody else fairly. As General Douglas MacArthur said, “There is no substitute for victory.” From the very beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, I believed we should have hammered out the repayment plan with the Iraqis—through exiled Iraqi dissidents—before we launched the war and rid the people of Iraq of their murderous dictator, Saddam Hussein. And back then, there were a few smart people who agreed with me and said the same thing. One of them was the director of the Defense Department’s Office of Net Assessment, Andrew Marshall. He recommended that oil revenues should be used to reduce the sticker price for occupation.1 Of course, that hasn’t happened. Still, there’s no reason we can’t or shouldn’t implement a cost-sharing arrangement with Iraq. Do not take no for an answer.
It’s hardly a radical idea. In September 2010, our own Government Accountability Office (GAO) and others studied the issue in depth and concluded that a cost-sharing plan is feasible and wise. All the know-nothings in the White House need to do is read the cover of the report: “Iraqi-U.S. Cost-Sharing: Iraq Has a Cumulative Budget Surplus, Offering the Potential for Further Cost-Sharing.” That’s literally the title. And if they actually read the first line of the report, they would know the GAO found that the Iraqi government is running a budget surplus of $52.1 billion. 2 Iraq just came through a lengthy war and they’re already back in business and flush with cash. Why are we footing the bill and getting nothing in return?
I’ll give you the answer. It’s because our so-called “leaders” in Washington know absolutely nothing about negotiation and dealmaking. Look, I do deals—big deals—all the time. I know and work with all the toughest operators in the world of high-stakes global finance. These are hard-driving, vicious, cutthroat financial killers, the kind of people who leave blood all over the boardroom table and fight to the bitter end to gain maximum advantage. And guess what? Those are exactly the kind of negotiators the United States needs, not these cream puff “diplomats” Obama sends around the globe to play patty cake with foreign governments. No, we need smart people with titanium spines and big brains who love America enough to fight fiercely for our interests. Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of State George Shultz used to ask diplomats into his office and, standing before a map, ask them what country they represented. When they pointed to their assigned country, he’d correct them and say, “No, that’s not your country, you represent the United States.” Leadership starts with the person at the top. The president sets the tone. Ronald Reagan put America first, and he knew how to negotiate. Barack Obama is no Ronald Reagan—not even close. And that’s why we’re in the mess we’re in and why our nation is on the wrong track and doing so badly.
Until we get a new president, our congressmen will continue to be treated with contempt by the Iraqi government, that government will continue to run a surplus at our expense, and we will continue to suffer economically because the Iraqi government, and everyone else, knows Obama is weak and won’t stand up for America’s interests. The man’s natural instinct is to bow before every foreign leader he can find.
We don’t owe the Middle East any apologies. America is not what’s wrong with the world. We’re an example of freedom to the world. No one can match America. We have big hearts—and the courage to do what’s right. But we’re not the world’s policemen. And if we have to take on that role, we need to send a clear message that protection comes at a price. If other countries benefit from our armed forces protecting them, those countries should cover the costs. Period.
Leadership Is Down, Gas Prices Are Up
Beyond simple justice, and beyond reducing our national debt, another advantage of taking the oil is that it will significantly bring down the price of gas. Gas prices are crippling our economy. In the first two years of the Obama administration, gas prices leapt a shocking 104 percent. That’s hardly the “hope and change” Americans voted for. That said, there are many environmentalists who are cheering and applauding higher prices. Their logic, if you can call it that, is that if we drive less we will emit less carbon, which will allegedly help alleviate the make-believe problem of global warming. Don’t forget, when he was a United States senator, Obama himself suggested that higher gas prices would be a good thing, but that he would prefer a “gradual adjustment.”3
Then look at the person Obama appoints as his Energy Secretary—Steven Chu, a guy who actually told the Wall Street Journal, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”4 So the fact that we’ve seen a 104 percent jump in the price of a gallon of gas since Obama was elected president should hardly come as a surprise to anyone who was paying attention. He and his supporters telegraphed as much all along. As crazy as it sounds, these folks want higher energy prices because they believe that will force Americans to drive less and businesses to slow down on production and transportation, which they think is a good thing, but which in fact will only cost us more jobs and put us at a greater economic disadvantage against China. Whose side are they on, anyway?
Here’s another one: Cap and Tax (or as they called it, Cap and Trade). Remember that? When he was campaigning to become president, Obama outright admitted that his plan to tax businesses on carbon emissions that exceeded his arbitrary cap would drive energy prices sky high. Here’s exactly what he said:Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket, even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad, because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal-powered plants, you know, natural gas, you name it. Whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to, uh, retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.5
Most of us shake our heads in disbelief at this stuff. But you really have to understand the fringe Left’s radical mindset and just how extreme and out of touch with reality this president and his dwindling group of supporters are with the rest of the country. They want us to have higher energy prices, they want to deprive our economy of the fuel it needs to grow, they intentionally put the pseudo-science of global warming and socialist management of our economy—the two go together—ahead of making our economy competitive and creating real private sector jobs for the American people.
The fact is, you’re not going to see real growth or create real jobs until we get these exorbitant energy costs under control. Someone needs to tell this president that business owners are not the enemy; they’re the people who create jobs. Government can’t create jobs. All it can do is put more people on the taxpayer’s dime. All it can do is sap our nation’s wealth.
The real way to help the 14.4 million unemployed Americans get their jobs back is not through “stimulus spending” that only has you, the taxpayer, cutting the check for yet more government employees. The real way is limiting taxes, slashing crippling and unnecessary regulations, and keeping commodity and fuel costs low.
If our “community organizer in chief” would take the time to study the marketplace, he would know that over the past year, things like fruit, pasta, coffee, bacon, and lots of other foods have registered price spikes as high as 40 percent, and there’s no end in sight—in large part because of the price of oil, which has spiked transportation and fertilizer costs.6 Until we get this country’s lifeblood—oil—back down to reasonable rates, America’s economy will continue to slump, jobs won’t get created, and American consumers will face ever-rising prices.
We can talk all day about windmills, nuclear power, and solar, geothermal, and other alternative fuels. I’m all for developing alternatives to oil, but that’s for the long term. The fact is, right now and for the foreseeable future, the planet runs on oil—and that means we need to get the price of a barrel of oil down—way down, maybe even to $20 a
barrel—and boy would our economy rock.
Does Obama do that? No. He goes around the country lecturing everyone that they need to buy hybrid vehicles, before hopping in his carbon-spewing presidential limousine and Air Force One. If he’s really concerned about carbon emissions and air pollution, then maybe he should have grounded his wife before she jetted off with forty of her “closest friends” on a lavish vacation to Spain on the taxpayers’ dime. I’ve got a private jet and love taking my wife and kids on expensive trips too, but there are two differences: I pay for it myself, and I don’t go around waving my finger in people’s faces lecturing them on the evils of travel and restricting their economic freedoms.
Obama promised he was going to create millions of so-called “green collar” jobs. He used that promise to justify his massive government giveaway of billions and billions of taxpayers’ dollars to green energy companies. We’re now seeing the results of Obama’s promise and big government scheme. Solyndra, a U.S. solar panel company, turned out to be a total bust. They were selling $6 solar panels for $3. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that’s a loser of a business model. But Solyndra’s owner, billionaire George Kaiser, had an inside connection with Obama: Kaiser was a big Obama donor and one of the president’s campaign fundraiser “bundlers.” So the Obama administration fast-tracked a $535 million federally guaranteed loan. Obama believed so much in Kaiser and Solyndra that he made a big public relations event at Solyndra to deliver a speech singing the praises of Solyndra, green jobs, and justifying why taxpayers should foot the bill to stimulate green companies. Predictably, the company went bankrupt, its 1,100 workers lost their jobs, and the American taxpayer got the shaft, to the tune of over half a billion dollars.
Obama has played off the Solyndra scandal, saying he has no regrets and that the company “went through the regular review process.”7 However, in the wake of FBI investigations, the truth is now leaking out. According to the Washington Post, emails have now been released revealing that “evidence is mounting that there was something irregular about the way the Solyndra deal got greenlighted.”8 I predict that there will be many more “Solyndra-style” revelations in the months to come. But Solyndra just shows you that this bunch is engaged in the very crony capitalism and insider deal-cutting that they are always accusing others of. Worse, it shows that the millions of green jobs Obama promised were completely bogus.
But even more shocking than the hypocrisy of it all is the total cluelessness it reveals. At one of the president’s speaking events, a man told Obama that he and his wife need a bigger vehicle because they have eight kids. So what did Obama do? He told the guy, “Buy a hybrid van.” Just one problem: they don’t exist in America. This president cannot even speak intelligently without a teleprompter. It’s embarrassing and sad!
When he’s not hectoring people about hybrids, he’s appointing his Attorney General Eric Holder to conduct criminal investigations of gas stations engaging in “price gouging.” This is a silly attempt to scapegoat and deflect attention away from how ineffective and weak he is on energy policy. As anyone with a brain knows, the reason gas prices are through the roof is because OPEC controls supply and therefore massively inflates crude oil prices.9
America doesn’t have time for games. This country is in huge trouble. It’s time to get serious and look at the facts. Currently, we’re paying over $85 a barrel for oil. The United States uses about 7 billion barrels of oil a year. Do the math. We’re singlehandedly transferring hundreds of billions of dollars a year to OPEC countries that hate our guts. And again, we’re giving all this money to governments who seethe with anti-American hatred. It’s stupid policy.
Take On the Oil Thugs
With proper leadership, we can get that price down to $40–$50 a barrel, if not the $20 that I have previously suggested. But to get there we need a president who will get tough with the real price gougers—not your local gas station, but the illegal cartel that’s holding American wealth hostage, OPEC. OPEC stands for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. It was created at the Baghdad Conference in September 1960 by our good buddies Iran, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Kuwait. Since then OPEC has added as members Angola, Ecuador, Qatar, Algeria, the United Arab Emirates, Nigeria, and our dear friend Libya. So here you have twelve men (in this case they’re all men) sitting around a table determining and fixing the price of oil. Now, if you have a store and I have a store and we collude to set prices, we go to jail. But that’s what these guys do, and no one lifts a finger. And the worst part of it is that these twelve OPEC countries control 80 percent of the world’s accessible oil.10
Let your eyes dart back up to that list of OPEC’s founding members. First up, Iran. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for wiping our close ally Israel off the map. He said that the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York were a plot by the United States government. He believes the Holocaust is a “myth.” His regime is developing nuclear weapons in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Next, Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. During one of his rambling United Nations speeches, Chavez called President George W. Bush “the devil.” His mouthpiece in Venezuela, ViVe TV, issued a press release in January 2010, saying the 200,000 innocent victims of the awful Haiti earthquake were really killed by an American “earthquake weapon.”11 Then look at Saudi Arabia. It is the world’s biggest funder of terrorism.12 Saudi Arabia funnels our petro dollars—our very own money—to fund the terrorists that seek to destroy our people, while the Saudis rely on us to protect them! Then there is Kuwait, which would not even exist had we and our allies not fought the First Gulf War against Saddam’s aggression. And of course we have Iraq, whose freedom we’ve paid for to the tune of more than a trillion dollars and more than 4,000 dead servicemen and women. These countries do us no favors. Through OPEC they squeeze us for every penny they can get out of us.
Two years ago, Amy Myers Jaffe, an energy expert from the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, did a study to determine the real product cost of a barrel of oil. The price of a barrel of oil back then was $ 60. Jaffe found that the actual cost to produce a barrel of oil then was $15, exactly a quarter of the actual market price.13 That means you’re looking at a 400 percent markup on pricing before the oil even gets to the refinery to be turned into gas. Again, if you or I did this, we would be thrown in jail, because it’s illegal to collude and fix prices. But these petro thugs do this year in and year out and laugh all the way to the bank. They claim they’re not restricting oil production to jack up the prices, but that’s a lie. In 1973, OPEC produced 30 million barrels a day. Guess how much they produced in 2011? That’s right, the same amount. Production hasn’t moved an inch. The reason for this is not because OPEC countries have reached peak oil output. After all, as Robert Zubin points out, as recently as April 2011, the Saudis announced they were going to cut production by 800,000 barrels a day, so they’re nowhere near running at full capacity.14 Instead, OPEC is squeezing production so oil prices skyrocket and America pays.
The OPEC countries wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for us—it’s our money that makes them rich and our troops that have made Iraq free and kept Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia from being gobbled up by Saddam Hussein (or now, potentially, by Iran). A smart negotiator would use the leverage of our dollars, our laws, and our armed forces to get a better deal from OPEC. It’s time to get tough. And smart!
Sue OPEC
We can start by suing OPEC for violating antitrust laws.
Currently, bringing a lawsuit against OPEC is difficult. It’s been made even more complicated by a 2002 federal court, and subsequent appeals courts, ruling that “under the current state of our federal laws the individual member states of OPEC are afforded immunity from suit brought for damage caused by their commercial activities when they act through OPEC.”15 The way to fix this is to make sure that Congress passes and the president signs the “No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act” (NOPEC
) (S.394), which will amend the Sherman Antitrust Act and make it illegal for any foreign governments to act collectively to limit production or set prices. If we get it passed, the bill would clear the way for the United States to sue member nations of OPEC for price-fixing and anti-competitive behavior.
One of the smart people in this debate is Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, a co-sponsor of the bill. “It’s time to get it passed,” says Grassley. “OPEC needs to know we are committed to stopping anti-competitive behavior.”
Here’s the good news: since 2000, this bill has passed the Senate Judiciary Committee four times with bipartisan support, and in May 2008, the NOPEC bill passed in the House when Democrats were in control. Now the bad news: President George W. Bush got spooked and threatened to veto the bill because he was afraid that, with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan raging, NOPEC might spark “retaliatory action.” Bush’s fear was misguided. First of all, these oil shakedown artists need and want our money. What are they going to do? Fold their arms, throw a temper tantrum, and refuse to sell us their oil and be out billions and billions of dollars? Give me a break. And two, they already engage in “retaliatory action”: it’s called a 104 percent spike in the price of gas since Obama took office, and that’s with him going around practically kissing their feet.