DANIEL TURNER
The petrodollar agreement with Saudi Arabia began in 1974, two years into Joe Biden’s first term as a United States senator. It ended this week, a half-century later, during Biden’s first term as U.S. president.
Among all the news stories that matter, few rank higher than this. It’s bigger than President Trump and Hunter Biden’s convictions, bigger than jobs reports and inflation numbers, and perhaps even bigger than the southern border crisis. The end of the petrodollar is the end of the United States as the world’s lone superpower.
Yet it is barely mentioned.
Until last week, the petrodollar was America’s dominance of the global economy. It solidified the oil industry as a thoroughly American industry in which other nations merely partook. In the way Henry Ford didn’t invent the car but rather invented the automobile industry, which brought cars to the masses, American titans like Charles Pratt and Henry Flagler and the great John D. Rockefeller didn’t invent oil refining. They invented the oil industry, which brought petrochemical products to the masses. The oil industry is American, and as much as it exists around the world in places like Venezuela and the Middle East, it is because Americans led the way.
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