Exposing The Big Lie At The Heart Of The Tariffs Scam – CleanTechnica

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Last Updated on: 14th February 2025, 11:40 am

The West Wing was a fictional TV show that featured a president who was wise, deliberative, and compassionate. A far cry from reality, I know, but work with me here. In one well known scene, he is playing chess with a senior staffer while a global crisis is playing out far away. The staffer is trying to make sense of what he thinks is happening but remains puzzled. The president offers this advice: “See the whole board.” The United States is currently shouting about tariffs from every rooftop, but thanks to two Substack authors — Emily Atkin at HEATED and Bill McKibben at The Crucial Years — we are able to see the whole board. Together, they expose the purpose of the tariffs brouhaha for what it is — a political payoff for wealthy campaign donors. If you think that sounds like corruption, you are not wrong.

If you want to understand the tariffs imbroglio, Atkins suggests it begins with Harold Hamm. Who? Remember when the so-called president met with a group of oil and gas executives and told them if they ponied up a billion dollars for his campaign, all their dreams would come true once we was elected? Hamm was the one who organized the event where that bribery invitation took place. Afterwards, Hamm organized many other fundraising events for oil and gas executives. We don’t know how much money was raised because the toxic Citizens United decision by Chief Justice John Roberts shielded that information from the public view. Some would argue that Citizens United has been instrumental in putting the current occupant of the Offal Office in power. If you think this hard right turn in America is a recent phenomenon, you may not be seeing the whole board.

After the election, the new president quickly nominated North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum to lead the Department of Interior, which oversees fossil fuel and renewable development on federal lands and waters. Burgum is close personal friends with Harold Hamm. He went on to nominate fracking executive and climate denier Chris Wright to lead the Department of Energy, which oversees energy policy and research. Wright was hand-selected for the position by Harold Hamm.

In May, a Trump advisor told the New York Times that Hamm “wants that LNG pause gone, he wants the California waiver and the tailpipe rule gone.” On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order that targeted all three of those things. In August, the Washington Post reported that Hamm’s policy priorities for a Trump administration would include “opening up more federal lands to drilling, easing the Endangered Species Act and curbing numerous regulations at the Environmental Protection Agency.” On his first day in office, Trump signed another executive order that targeted all those things. Atkin notes that the putative president and his acolytes “love to suggest these pro-fossil fuel policies as some sort of benevolent act for ordinary Americans and are simply a means of lowering inflation. That’s just a distraction from the bigger picture,” she warns. “The primary goal of Trump’s energy policies is to drive profits for Hamm and the other oil billionaires who donated lavishly to his campaign.’

Tariffs & Political Power

What does all this have to do with tariffs? Bill McKibben has the answer to that question. He writes that in the last few days, Taiwan, India, and Japan made clear they will be buying exported American LNG in the months and years ahead. Why? Entirely in an effort to hold off tariffs from the Trump administration. As the Japanese prime minister put it, “We will cooperate to strengthen energy security between the two countries including increasing exports of United States liquefied natural gas to Japan in a mutually beneficial manner.”

Bloomberg says LNG importers in India are under pressure from their government to reach deals that could smooth relations with Trump, but will be looking for the best possible terms before signing any agreements. Meanwhile, reports from Taipei indicate Taiwan is preparing to buy more liquefied natural gas from the US to reduce its trade surplus and potentially avoid higher tariffs. South Korea, Vietnam, and the European Union are among energy buyers trying to appease the bloviating tyrant in the White House and reduce the threat of tariffs by increasing purchases of LNG from the United States.

Having disclosed the method behind the tariffs madness, McKibben then gets personal. “I want to highlight these shakedowns, which have mostly been lost amidst the thousand other terrible things the Trump administration has loosed upon the world, because I know that before long Big Oil will be holding them up as evidence that the world needs and wants more fossil fuel. In fact, the world wants to move in entirely the opposite direction. 85 percent of new electric generation in 2023 came from renewables and the numbers for 2024 will almost certainly be higher. That, of course, terrifies the fossil fuel industry — which is why they spent record amounts on November’s election. As fracking baron Harold Hamm explained, ‘We’ve got to do this because it’s the most important election in our lifetime.’

“And now they’re getting the payoff. Trump threatens tariffs and offers to make them go away if they buy some LNG. It’s akin to a protection racket. Pay up, or your windows get broken. It’s not criminal, it’s all entirely legal. It’s just wrong. This particular protection racket makes no sense for America at large. Forget, for a moment, that LNG is a huge driver of the climate change driving fire and flood (by the time you’ve shipped it overseas it’s far worse even than coal); exporting it in huge quantities also obviously drives up the price for Americans still reliant on fracked gas for heating and cooking. The Energy Information Administration just predicted that natural gas prices will rise 21 percent in the year ahead. Politico did the math.”

McKibben adds that Paul Cicio, president of the Industrial Energy Consumers of America trade association, said US LNG exports are pushing natural gas and electricity prices higher. Every “dollar increase in natural gas costs consumers $34 billion plus about $20 billion in higher electricity cost,” Cicio said in a statement Tuesday. It’s “only going to get worse from here as LNG exports increase.” The Sierra Club points out the tariffs strategy “makes no sense.” And they’re right, McKibben says. “As long as we’re talking about the future of the planet or the cost to American consumers. But that’s not who Trump is thinking about. He’s got one constituency and one only — the Big Oil execs who bankrolled his campaign. For them, this is sweet payback, a 100-1 return on their investment.”

See The Whole Board

Once all the pieces come into focus, what we are witnessing is a scheme in which the US government has become nothing but a shill for the fossil fuel industry. The impacts on the climate are given no consideration. The impacts on the costs to individual Americans is given no consideration. Don Corleone would be in awe of what Don Don has done by making the entire nation part of his personal self-enrichment scheme. Remember, America, we got here because…