Emboldened by his successful boycott of President Joe Biden’s Summit of the Americas, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador further humiliated Biden at the White House this week.
The leftist populist, known universally as AMLO, savaged Biden with a half-hour lecture on his failed immigration, drug, and energy policies.
To be sure, Lopez Obrador is a far-left, open-borders ideologue who wants amnesty for 10 million illegal immigrants already in the United States. He has previously stated that migrants from around the world have a human right to enter the U.S. as they please. These are all terrible ideas that are not that far off from Biden’s current immigration preferences.
But when it comes to energy policy, Lopez Obrador did make some good points.
On average, gas is over $1 a gallon cheaper in Mexico ($3.12) than it is in the U.S. ($4.60). The gap is even larger between Mexico and Democrat-controlled states such as California ($5.99).
“We have decided that it was necessary for us to allow Americans who live close to the border to go and get their gasoline on the Mexican side at lower prices,” Lopez Obrador told Biden. “And right now, a lot of drivers, a lot of Americans are going to Mexico to get their gasoline.”
Mexico’s oil industry is far from perfect. It was nationalized into one government-run company, Pemex, in 1938. Like any government-run company, it has been riddled with corruption and mismanagement ever since.
But what Mexico understands, and Biden and the Democratic Party do not, is that you have to invest in oil and gas infrastructure if you want to improve refinery capacity and bring down the cost of gasoline.
The U.S. hasn’t built a new refinery since 1976. Mexico, on the other hand, not only just bought a refinery in Houston for $596 million, but it is also building a brand new one in the Mexican state of Tabasco for $8 billion. Another $3 billion is slated to modernize six other Mexican refineries.
Meanwhile, here in the U.S., environmental regulations make it impossible to invest in refinery modernization.
Instead of adding refinery capacity every year, Biden’s America is taking refinery capacity offline. This means that as long as the Democrats are in power, the gap between the cost of gas in Mexico and the U.S. will only grow.
And to be fair to Biden and Democrats, they probably already know that their energy policies are making gas more expensive. That is the whole point — to make fossil fuels like gasoline more expensive so that drivers drive less and also switch to electric cars.
Biden said as much in Tokyo earlier this year. “Here’s the situation,” he said. “When it comes to the gas prices, we’re going through an incredible transition that is taking place that, God willing, when it’s over, we’ll be stronger, and the world will be stronger and less reliant on fossil fuels.”
The reason Biden and the Democrats don’t want to build new refineries or make existing ones more efficient is that they want to push the country away from fossil fuels. The pain at the pump is precisely their whole idea.
So score one for Lopez Obrador. He has every right to poke fun at Biden for the high gas prices he has created.
Source: Washingtonexaminer.com
