ICYMI: Trump Cut a Deal With Putin, MBS, and OPEC in 2020 to Raise Oil Prices for Americans To Bail Out His Most Important Oil Donor

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today The Independent reports that in 2020, Donald Trump cut a deal with Vladimir Putin, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and OPEC+ to deliberately increase oil prices for Americans so that he could bail out his most important Big Oil megadonor, Harold Hamm, after Hamm lost $3 billion in just a few days.  

The Independent: How Trump set the Biden administration up for an economic disaster with a bargain made in 2020

“As Donald Trump patches up the ever-growing hole in his finances resulting from his ongoing legal escapades with fossil fuel money, it looks as if a late-game gamble the former president made during his last year in office may be finally paying off.

That gamble may have also set up Joe Biden to deal with the effects of higher gas prices just as he was taking office a year later…

“But the Covid pandemic had incredibly far-reaching effects, and the global energy sector was one of the first to be hit. The near-overnight shutdown of global travel and the implementation of lockdown policies in some countries led to a massive downward spiral for world oil prices, which became mired in a trade war between Russia and OPEC.”

“Enter Harold Hamm, a supporter of Trump’s from 2016 who backed the president for re-election that year. Hamm, an oil tycoon, led the charge in pushing Trump to respond to this international trade war. Plunging oil prices were on track to devastate the energy economy of Texas — which is a major oil-producing hub, but could not compete with OPEC and Russia’s lower prices. Hamm warned Trump at the time that a collapse of the Lone Star State’s fossil fuel economy would certainly lead to his electoral defeat, as he reasoned that Texas would turn blue for the first time in decades.”

“It seemed like a far-fetched outcome, but one possibility was much more likely: Hamm’s contributions to the Republican Party, and money from others like him, would dry up alongside Texas’s oil wells. That was a far more worrying prospect. Hamm was described by one energy sector executive as capable of raising $1bn for a candidate and their respective side of the aisle in an election cycle, drawing from his deep connections through the industry.”

“So Trump attempted avert that outcome. The manner he did so was simple: by convincing OPEC and Russia to cease their price cut fight with a massive shared production cut, one that stabilized prices and dropped production by 9.7m barrels per day. The deal was finally inked in April of that year — but only after Trump reportedtly threatened to end a military partnership with Saudi Arabia over its government’s balking.”

“The US energy sector, and Texas in particular, however, could not be shielded from the effects of pandemic in perpetuity. Domestic oil production dropped by the greatest amount in recorded history while Texas’s oil companies shed more than 70,000 jobs in a one-year stretch between September 2019 and September 2020. But it won over Hamm and his allies. The billionaire lavished a number of state parties with donations that year, and he poured tens of thousands more into Trump’s PAC and other Republican causes.”

“Meanwhile, Trump continues to see his cash windfall continue. Hamm is firmly back in his camp for the 2024 cycle, and according to FEC reports has already donated more than $600,000 to the ex-president’s joint fundraising committee, which shares donations between him, a host of state GOP chapters, and the Republican National Committee (RNC).”

“Harold Hamm is back there — he’s my original oil guy that taught me so much about oil,” the ex-president was quoted as saying at a fundraiser which Hamm attended in May of 2024, according to The Washington Post…

“But as Harris seeks the White House this fall, she’ll be doing so against an avalanche of fossil fuel money set in motion by Trump years ago — one which has had very real effects on American consumers and US foreign policy.”