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Commentary By Jordan McGillis

Biden Tanks U.S. Energy Economy

He takes all the wrong lessons from the recent OPEC cuts.

While Americans were doomscrolling through election results on the morning of November 9, something more consequential than the Democrats’ potentially holding the Senate was unfolding: an ominous round of tech layoffs. According to internal documents, Meta (formerly Facebook, Inc.) is letting go of more than ten thousand employees, with additional pink slips likely to follow. The Meta news comes on the heels of Salesforce’s latest sacking spree, which reportedly put hundreds of workers into the ranks of the unemployed earlier in the week. 

Though tech has become a punching bag for the American political Right, these developments are signals of a coming wider recession. While we have been caught up in the midterm melee, bad economic trends have become more pronounced in recent weeks. Take, for instance, the recent OPEC Plus decision to cut oil production. Though the White House framed it as cynical realpolitik — and while it certainly met with the Kremlin’s approval and showed the failure of President Joe Biden’s fist-bump diplomacy — the decision was a sober, preemptive retrenchment in the face of a global downturn. 

Meanwhile, with inflation raging at levels not seen in forty years, the U.S. Federal Reserve is ratcheting interest rates ever higher, sending shivers down the spines of investors and macro observers. Though the Fed may yet land the monetary equivalent of a figure-skating quadruple axel, stemming inflation without sparking a recessionary pullback, the odds are against it. The OPEC production cuts can be interpreted as a targeted blow against the Biden presidency only by the most conspiratorially minded. OPEC sees a looming demand slide ahead as the inflation bubble bursts, a view that comports with other energy forecasts, such as those from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and the International Energy Agency. As is the case in American tech giants’ belt-tightening, OPEC’s planning is a reaction to economic expectations. Across many sectors, the repercussions of policy mistakes are now being felt.

Continue reading the entire piece here at The American Spectator

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Jordan McGillis is a Paulson Policy Analyst at the Manhattan Institute

Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images