Sunday, March 27, 2016

Trump: US Should Threaten to Stop Buying Oil From Saudi Arabia If They Don't Help Fight ISIS

As part of two telephone conversations on Friday, Donald Trump discussed his views on foreign policy with Maggie Haberman and David E. Sanger of The New York Times at one point he was asked how much pressure he would put on Saudi Arabia to get them to engage ISIS directly:
HABERMAN: Mr. Trump, you have talked about your plans to defeat ISIS, and how you would approach it. Would you be willing to stop buying oil from the Saudis if they’re unwilling to go in and help?

SANGER: On the ground?

TRUMP: Oh yeah, sure. I would do that. The beautiful thing about oil is that, you know, we’re really getting close, because of fracking, and because of new technology, we’re really in a position that we weren’t in, you know, years ago, and the reason we’re in the Middle East is for oil..

SANGER: But I just want to make sure I understand your answer to Maggie’s question. So you said earlier this week that we should use air power but not send in ground forces. That had to be done by the regional Arab partners. We assume by that, you mean the Saudis, the U.A.E. and others from whom we might purchase oil or have alliances. I think Maggie’s question, if I understood it right, was if these countries are unwilling to send in ground troops against ISIS, and so far they have been, despite President Obama’s efforts to get them in, would you be willing to say, “We will stop buying oil from you, until you send ground troops?”

TRUMP: There’s two answers to that. The answer is, probably yes, but I would also say this: We are not being reimbursed for our protection of many of the countries that you’ll be talking about, that, including Saudi Arabia. You know, Saudi Arabia, for a period of time, now the oil has gone down, but still the numbers are phenomenal, and the amount of money they have is phenomenal. But we protect countries, and take tremendous monetary hits on protecting countries. That would include Saudi Arabia, but it would include many other countries, as you know. We have, there’s a whole big list of them. We lose, everywhere. We lose monetarily, everywhere. And yet, without us, Saudi Arabia wouldn’t exist for very long. It would be, you know, a catastrophic failure without our protection. And I’m trying to figure out, why is it that we aren’t going in and saying, at a minimum, at a minimum it’s a two-part question, with respect to Maggie’s question. But why aren’t we going in and saying, “At a minimum, I’m sorry folks, but you have to, under no circumstances can we continue to do this.” You know, we needed, we needed oil desperately years ago. Today, because – again, because of the new technologies, and because of places that we never thought had oil, and they do have oil, and there’s a glut on the market, there’s a tremendous glut on the market, I mean you have ships out at sea that are loaded up and they don’t even know where to go dump it. But we don’t have that same pressure anymore, at all. And we shouldn’t have that for a long period of time, because there’s so many places. I mean, they’re closing wells all over the place. So, I would say this, I would say at a minimum, we have to be reimbursed, substantially reimbursed, I mean, to a point that’s far greater than what we’re being paid right now.

4 comments:

  1. That will eliminate ISIS nice and quick.

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    Replies
    1. ...along with petrodollar and ability of US to export inflation. Not Gonna Happen.

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  2. The USA only gets 8-10% of its oil from Saudi Arabia. China and Europe would have to join to make Saudi act

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  3. Trump needs a speech coach. He can't get his point across in less than 50 sentences which means he's nervous or disorganized. I'm sure he's smart, but he doesn't sound like it.

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