Alaska Republicans won’t confess that Trump is the greatest enemy of the Alaska LNG project
There was scant attention paid to President Trump’s tariff chaos Wednesday at a two-hour legislative hearing on the Alaska LNG project, though the leaders of two state corporations both claimed that Trump’s support for the gas line helps the project.
Trump’s erratic behavior is the biggest threat to the latest gas pipeline dream, though Alaska’s leaders won’t confess. They also refuse to say that Trump is trying to blackmail Asian leaders into supporting what Sen. Dan Sullivan is calling “America’s Gasline.”
A day before his tariff flip-flop, Trump was bragging that leaders from around the world are racing to “kiss my ass” and they are “dying to make a deal.”
But once other nations began dumping U.S. treasuries, Trump blinked.
As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman put it, “If you hire clowns, you should expect a circus.”
The Tump Liberation Day stock market crash resumed today.
I have been accused of being a gas line naysayer.
Having watched this process for 50 years, I am a late-in-life convert to the Fred Pratt Pipeline Principle—the time to start believing is when you can count two trans-Alaska pipelines.
(Pratt is a former Alaska newspaperman who said he would wait until he could drive to Fox and count two pipelines, one for oil and one for gas. The route of the proposed gas pipeline now calls for the pipe to pass west of Fairbanks, but the Pratt Pipeline Principle remains.)
Gov. Mike Dunleavy, Sullivan, Rep. Nick Begich the Third and others continue to claim that Trump has made this the Golden Age of America and the Golden Age of Alaska, repeating forms of the idiotic claim that the “road to energy dominance runs through Alaska.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, dubbed by Friedman as Trump’s “assistant chief knucklehead,” deserves a promotion in the knucklehead office. He said Wednesday the new China tariff is 125 percent. The real number is 145 percent. He said Trump was courageous and a great negotiator and he didn’t blink.
Bessent repeated that “we are thinking about a big LNG project in Alaska that Korea, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan are interested in financing and taking a substantial portion of the off-take. But again, in essence that is trade because it will decrease the trade deficit that we have with those countries. So everything’s on the table.”
Sullivan, Trump cheerleader, said America’s Gasline is a “prime example” of something those nations should pay for to help themselves and get in good with Trump.
As the Financial Post reported, quoting a natural gas markets expert at Columbia University, Anne-Sophie Corbeau, “If (Trump) was not trying actively to make them sign a deal, I am not sure anybody would actually look at that project.”
The project requires thinking ahead for decades, not just the next presidential election, after which Trump will be gone. That time horizon will not be lost on government and business leaders in Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.
No one is going to sign binding deals with this turmoil. They will sign non-binding documents.
At the Wednesday hearing, the heads of the Alaska Industrial Development & Export Authority and the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation made passing reference to how great Trump’s strong-arm approach to Japan, Korea and Taiwan is for America’s Gasline.
“He is focused on the gas line,” AIDEA boss Randy Ruaro claimed. “His ambassador nominated for Japan is focused on the gas line and having President Trump’s support I think can make a significant difference in getting buyers lined up for the pipeline. There was some articles today about teams from South Korea heading to Washington, D.C. today to start negotiating on this topic,” Ruaro said Wednesday to the Legislative Budget & Audit Committee.
Frank Richards, the president of AGDC, also kept up the ruse that Trump is negotiating on a coherent basis with Asian nations.
“President Trump from day one, signing of the executive orders provided tremendous amount of support, specifically naming this project in one of the executive orders, as well as you know trying to unleash Alaska’s extraordinary energy potential. He’s continued to make this project one of the key projects in his discussions now with our Asian allies about the opportunity for off-take (buying gas) as well as investment. And so that’s ongoing right now,” Richards said.
What’s ongoing right now is an incoherent Trump trade war, a deadly environment for anyone trying to concoct business deals that cost tens of billions. This project needs fiscal certainty from the feds, but Trump brings incompetence to the table.
Alaska Republican leaders, who are afraid of crossing Trump, would rather repeat the mindless “energy dominant” mantra.
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