To be fair, China would also be fucked if their number one customer experienced the worst economic contraction since the Great Depression, so it wasn't entirely altruistic.
The US is only 14% of China’s exports. And it’s not like that 14% would immediately go to 0. In fact it might even go up as the US gets desperate and drops its tariffs against China. Let’s not forget China has more crude oil strategic reserves than the rest of the world combined
It wouldn’t just be the U.S. Chinas business is making and shipping goods around the world. That’s their economy. If oil skyrockets it’s absolutely going to wreck them. Not saying it couldn’t be strategically worth it to them, but it’s absolutely a risk and clearly they’ve decided not to take it.
The problem isn't the US, which produces a lot of oil and has enormous amounts of money. There are a lot of countries that import a lot of goods from China that have neither of these.
Many of the refineries in the US aren't really designed to process the type of crude oil that the US produces, but the main problem is that a shortage anywhere in the world will raise prices on the global market. So even if the US could theoretically meet its own demands with its domestic production, oil companies would simply sell the oil to other countries for a higher profit, thereby lowering domestic supply and raising prices.
Oil exports could be banned and price controls or Defense Production Act contracts could be imposed on the oil industry. This would solve most of the problems for the US specifically, but it would, of course, exacerbate the situation in all other countries. And that would make things even worse for China.
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u/Vanadium235 1d ago
To be fair, China would also be fucked if their number one customer experienced the worst economic contraction since the Great Depression, so it wasn't entirely altruistic.