President Donald Trump’s energy strategy is a crucial diplomatic tool used with both friends and foes, Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA) explained during an event with Breitbart News on Monday.
Host and Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle asked McCormick to discuss President Trump using energy as both a “sword and an olive branch for achieving the American interest on the world stage.”
McCormick observed that Trump has “expanded the economic agenda across everything” from foreign direct investment to energy.
“The NATO and the economic team is gonna talk about trade relations, and the foreign direct investment [will] be the Treasury,” McCormick said, explaining that it is crucial to look at these things as part of the broader national strategy “for a fair relationship [and] a mutually beneficial relationship.”
“One that’s advantageous to the United States. That’s the way he’s approached it,” he said, identifying the “big stick” in the tent of American power as energy. Therefore, it is one of the best tools the U.S. can use to achieve true fairness globally.
“The world is getting reshaped right now. There’s been no time since World War II where the shape of geopolitics is changing so quickly with what’s happening in the Western Hemisphere, with Venezuela, what will likely happen with Cuba, what’s happening in the Middle East,” McCormick said. “But underlying all that is energy.”
He used Venezuela and Iran as prime examples, noting that the former has 18 percent of the petroleum reserves in the world, while Iran has 12 percent total.
If those reserves are “in the hands of much more pro-Western governments,” with America continuing to go down the road of energy dominance, the U.S. will become “a much more dominant player on the world stage,” the senator predicted.
“Couple that with the recent decision by the UAE to leave OPEC, and all of a sudden geopolitics and energy politics are changing in a dramatic way, I think, in a way, that will be very advantageous to the United States, because we’re a much more energy dominant power,” McCormick said.
The senator said it is crucial to take steps now to ensure that this strategy remains in place long after President Trump has left office.
“I don’t mean just me legislation, although legislation is part of it, but we’re really retooling the whole country,” he said, attributing his victory in Pennsylvania to addressing energy concerns and the left’s inability to say the word “fracking.”
“I think that had a big thing to do with it. That’s changing. The politics of energy are changing, so we need to make sure that this consensus around energy dominance is made more formal and permanent by legislation, but also by all the steps we take to ensure America’s role in the world,” McCormick added.
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