Two days ago, President Trump tweeted “The World does not want to see, or need, higher oil prices!”. But yesterday, Foreign Policy published Keith Johnson’s piece “Are Putin and Mohammed bin Salman Getting Ready for Another High-Five?”, which noted:
… deeper cooperation between Riyadh and Moscow to manage the world’s oil supply—even if that means bucking the directives of the White House—could be one lasting outcome of this week’s OPEC gathering. And Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman may have reason to repeat their notorious high-five at last week’s G-20 meeting.
And today, after closed-door negotiations, OPEC and Russia agreed to cut oil production by 1.2 million barrels per day. World oil prices immediately jumped about 4%, and presumably we’ll see more price hikes at the pump soon.
Now we know why Putin and the Saudi crown prince were high-fiving at the G-20 meeting. They were high-fiving in glee at Trump’s incompetence and impotence. “What a maroon!”, they must be thinking. And they are thinking they will have many more opportunities to high-five in the next couple of years.