Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton?
If based only on energy positions stated by major-party candidates for the US presidency, the choice for the oil and gas industry would be easy.
A President Trump would accelerate oil and gas leasing of the Outer Continental Shelf, rescind the Clean Power Plan, reject the Paris agreement on climate, revive Keystone XL pipeline expansion, and "lift restrictions on American energy." A President Clinton would set aggressive targets for renewable energy and reduction in energy "waste," cut US oil consumption by one-third, eliminate "the billions of wasteful tax subsidies oil and gas companies have enjoyed for too long and invest in clean energy," and "make environmental justice and climate justice central priorities."
Little influence
Republican Trump would encourage work by the oil and gas industry. Democrat Clinton would divert money from the industry to renewable energy. For the oil and gas business, Trump's approach clearly is superior.
But energy policy will influence the election very little. Voters have other priorities. Furthermore, energy policy interacts with other issues, such as trade and international relations. On those topics, Trump's appeal fades. Improved access to OCS opportunities would lose allure amid global recession born of a trade war. And the more-solid energy policy belongs to the candidate still trailing in polls and dependent for victory on scandals besetting his opponent.
As this bizarre campaign has shown, surprises happen. But the oil and gas industry should prepare for a Clinton victory. That outcome needn't be ruinous. Four more years of centrally planned energy would deliver hard lessons America somehow must learn.
A President Clinton would inherit whatever the Supreme Court lets stand of the forced greening of electric power. By perhaps halfway through her first term, therefore, electricity would be rising in cost and sagging in reliability. By then, too, the costs of poorly designed health-care reform would have claimed a palpable share of American incomes. Damage control thus would consume the administration. Clinton and her political party would be receiving condign blame for sacrificing economic welfare to governmental activism and for misrepresenting benefits and costs. Nothing focuses the popular mind quite like officially imposed hardship.
Americans didn't ask for the energy impoverishment that Europeans, for example, already experience and increasingly resent. President Barack Obama brought it to them with executive orders and regulatory fanaticism. For his preferred successor to have to manage the consequences would be fitting. Quite likely, she would serve only one term. And Americans now smitten with energy utopianism would have come to their senses. It wouldn't be the first time they surrendered energy choice to politicians only to reclaim it once the costs hit.
The purpose here is not to endorse Clinton. It is merely to suggest what might be necessary to clarify American thinking about a national priority stressed recently by statist manipulation by both political parties. If Americans really need a painful reminder about the realities of energy and costs of mistakes, righteous policy intentions expressed without ideological context before a Trump victory would not, by themselves, be enough.
During a Trump administration, activists now writing regulations would retreat to think tanks and pressure groups to raise money for the next election, leveraging a demonic image the real estate mogul has done little to discredit. Energy illusions that need discarding would slip instead into political dormancy, postponing rather than averting an economic reckoning.
Breaking the cycle
Trump could break this dreadful cycle if he made energy the foundation of a broad appeal for governmental restraint. From price controls of the past to renewable fuel standards of the present, examples abound in the history energy of problems created by official expansionism. A clever Republican might apply them analogously to a competitor's promises of, say, free college tuition, forced profit-sharing, or climate justice.
A call by Trump for limited government, based on ideals of freedom rather than insults of bureaucrats, would be refreshing. Scandals might then handle the rest.
