I know many of you read the title to this diary and asked yourself “Why?” Why would the Koch Brothers have an interest in maintaining huge trade imbalances? Well read on and you’ll learn why, and trust me the answer isn’t that hard to guess.
Many Republicans and conservatives astroturf groups like Americans for Prosperity to blame the causes of our massive (HUNDREDS of BILLIONS of US DOLLARS each year) trade deficit in goods and services on (1) China, or the (2) The Federal Debt and/or Budget Deficit, or (3) President Obama and his liberalsocialistfascist allies in the Democratic Party and all their evil socialist policies like health care reform, or (4) I suppose, these days, even on those well known greedy union thugs otherwise known as “Teachers.” Yet, the largest and most consistent over the last 2 decades in our growing trade imbalance is (and I know this will shock you) imported oil as even hard headed business types acknowledge.
UBS’s head of Asia-Pacific economics argues that the real global trade imbalance isn’t U.S.-China, it is U.S.-oil. As shown below, current account surpluses from fuel exporting-nations have been a far larger driver of total global trade imbalances coming from emerging markets.
China’s current account surplus (in blue) has been large in recent years, as a percentage of the global economy, but it has been dwarfed by fuel exporters (in green):
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/china-trade-imbalance-usa-oil-2010-4#ixzz1G8Qj1lNm
Indeed, over 54% of the 2009 US Trade deficit is directly caused by our reliance on imported oil, according to the U.S. Census Bureau of Economic Analysis, “U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services: Exhibit 8”, updated June 2010
America’s dependence on foreign oil drives the trade deficit. In 2009, the U.S. imported over $253 billion in petroleum-related products while only exporting $49 billion.Petroleum-related products include crude oil, natural gas, fuel oil and other petroleum-based distillates such as kerosene. This oil-related deficit of $204 billion was over half of the total 2009 trade deficit of $380.7 billion.
Of course, in 2011, with gas prices spiking again, and America ever more reliant on oil imports, is it any surprise that the Koch Brothers have been fighting tooth and nail against government/private funded research and development pf green technologies. Last year the Kochs were the primary sponsor of the referendum that sought to repeal California’s “Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006” which requires cuts to carbon emissions and investment in green technologies.
The Koch brothers spent $2.51 million from their political action committee,since 2006 on political campaign contributions, more than any other oil and gas industry PAC.
They are also the primary funders of a number of conservative astroturf and tea party affiliated groups including $5 MILLION for Americans for Prosperity a well known organizer of tea party events, a major funder of climate change deniers like The Heartland Institute, and a supporter of “pro-tobacco industry positions on issues like cigarette taxes and clean indoor air laws” that has fought against “smokefree workplace laws and cigarette excise tax increases.”
This year, Koch funded House Republicans are attempting to strip both federal funding for investment in green technologies and the EPA’s right to regulate emissions of greenhouse gases caused by burning fossil fuels such as petroleum products made by (cough, cough) Koch Industries. And, (more shocks) the Kochs stand to make billions from their investments in Canadian Tar Sands.
The Keystone XL pipeline, awaiting a thumbs up or down on a presidential permit, would increase the import of heavy oil from Canada’s oil sands to the U.S. by as much as 510,000 barrels a day, if it gets built. […]
What’s been left out of the ferocious debate over the pipeline, however, is the prospect that if president Obama allows a permit for the Keystone XL to be granted, he would be handing a big victory and great financial opportunity to Charles and David Koch, his bitterest political enemies and among the most powerful opponents of his clean economy agenda. […]
A SolveClimate News analysis, based on publicly available records, shows that Koch Industries is already responsible for close to 25 percent of the oil sands crude that is imported into the United States, and is well-positioned to benefit from increasing Canadian oil imports.
A Koch Industries operation in Calgary, Alberta, called Flint Hills Resources Canada LP, supplies about 250,000 barrels of tar sands oil a day to a heavy oil refinery in Minnesota, also owned by the Koch brothers.
Flint Hills Resources Canada also operates a crude oil terminal in Hardisty, Alberta, the starting point of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.
The company’s website says it is “among Canada’s largest crude oil purchasers, shippers and exporters.” Koch Industries also owns Koch Exploration Canada, L.P., an oil sands-focused exploration company also based in Calgary that acquires, develops and trades petroleum properties.
Ah the smell of Koch Industries’ imported tar sands in the morning. It smells like the stink of corruption and extortion all rolled into one Koch Brothers sulfurous smelling blast of flatulence.
After the 2010 midterm elections, they have become established at the center of GOP power, according to The Los Angeles Times. The paper reported this week that Koch Industries and its employees formed the largest single oil and gas donor to members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
That includes the campaign coffers of the new committee chairman, Fred Upton (R-Mich.), who though once a moderate is now leading the anti-regulatory charge in the Republican-dominated House.
They don’t want good paying green tech jobs in the US because that would hurt their bottom line. They are sellers of foreign oil and refiners of foreign oil products. Green technology, conservation, energy efficiency, restrictions on carbon emissions, regulations regarding air and water pollution, all of which would lead to many, many American jobs would hurt their business interest in selling you and I dirty oil from the holdings abroad, and dirty oil products that they refine.
If the US of A runs a trade deficit until the entire country is bankrupt, what is that to them? By then they will have made their dirty filthy BILLIONS of DOLLARS of profits from tar sand oil, or from their interest in developing environmentally destructive hydrofracking operations here and overseas. The US of A, land of the free, home of the brave, and already the equivalent of a third world country in which the few benefit monstrously at the expense of the many, matters little to them no matter what they say.
After all, their motto isn’t E PLURIBUS UNUM, it is GREED IS GOOD. And indeed greed has been very very good to them, even as it harms your future, my future, the future of our children, the future of our country and the future of our planet.
