U.S. economy, manufacturing and oil boom proving socialist naysayers wrong
The shale revolution has put the U.S. on track to become the biggest energy exporter in the world by 2023, potentially surpassing Russia and Saudi Arabia. Yet what should also really excite America is the fact that the U.S. became the world’s biggest oil producer in 2018, according to the International Energy Agency.
This rebirth of the U.S. energy industry also reflects well on the fact that President Trump is making good on his promise to bring back manufacturing jobs and make America’s economy the envy of the world.
Sometimes if you want to measure the health of an economy, you should do it in barrels of oil. The increased demand growth is a signal that the U.S. economy is growing at the fastest pace of any in the world, an achievement that many naysayers thought to be impossible.
They ceded our manufacturing jobs and our economic growth to countries like China, India and Vietnam, and thought that the growth prospects of the United States were limited. They said that because of the advanced stage of our economy, we could never be the leader in oil-demand growth because the best days of our economy were behind us. They said that our manufacturing base was gone forever, and we just had to acknowledge that we faced a world where we would have high unemployment and low wages, and that we would have to depend on the government to make ends meet.
This energy boom of course is creating real jobs with high wages and improving the lives of many average Americans. While the Obama administration mocked what then-candidate Trump was saying about the possibility of growth in the U.S. economy and the return of manufacturing jobs to the U.S., Trump has more than delivered.
According to Forbes: “In the last 26 months of Obama’s presidency, manufacturing employment grew by 96,000 or 0.8 percent. In Trump’s first 26 months, manufacturers added 479,000 jobs, or 3.9 percent, 399 percent more jobs than Obama’s record.”
This is in large part being driven by U.S. leadership. The Trump corporate tax cuts, the trade wars and a revamping of the old NAFTA has all played a part in our U.S. oil demand growth story and all the benefits that brings with it. If the Trump administration can solidify a new trade deal with China, this oil demand growth story will expand even more.
This should also be a lesson for the socialists who want to reverse the gains that the U.S. private sector has made. Socialists always find what is wrong with free markets, free speech and free enterprise. They continue to look at the U.S. economy as the problem, and not the solution.
Yet if you look at the facts, the U.S. economy is strongest when we allow our businesses to grow, we encourage them to create, and don’t hamper them with needless overbearing regulation.
Phil Flynn is senior energy analyst at The PRICE Futures Group and a Fox Business Network contributor. He is one of the world's leading market analysts, providing individual investors, professional traders, and institutions with up-to-the-minute investment and risk management insight into global petroleum, gasoline, and energy markets. His precise and timely forecasts have come to be in great demand by industry and media worldwide and his impressive career goes back almost three decades, gaining attention with his market calls and energetic personality as writer of The Energy Report. You can contact Phil by phone at (888) 264-5665 or by email at pflynn@pricegroup.com