‘Oil Is Cornerstone’: Meaning Of Trump's New Executive Orders
23- 21.01.2025, 14:22
- 17,812
Key takeaways.
US President Donald Trump has signed an unprecedented number of decrees that affect both domestic and foreign policy of the United States.
Charter97.org has asked Ukrainian political scientist, professor of Kyiv National University named after Taras Shevchenko Petro Oleshchuk to analyse the first decisions of the new US president after his inauguration:
- Let me start with that Trump has largely cancelled the decisions of the previous administration. In general, he changed course globally: he withdrew from the World Health Organisation, from the Paris Agreement on climate change. Obviously, the latter is part of his further moves to lift restrictions on US oil production. He plans to lift them completely; he has repeatedly said that they need to pump oil.
In general, this was expected, as were his decisions related to declaring a state of emergency on the border with Mexico and his overall anti-migrant actions.
Globally, of course, his decisions to impose a 90-day moratorium on providing aid to other nations drew public attention. Many people associate this with Ukraine, but in fact, it is not primarily about Ukraine, but a number of other states, including the Middle East. There are a lot of such programmes.
I can't say how much it affects Ukraine, because the aid programmes for last year have ended and the new ones have not been voted on, so it's hard for me to say what programmes in relation to Ukraine it may affect.
He also cancelled the blocking of TikTok, or rather suspended it for 75 days. Apparently, he expects to come to some kind of agreement on changing the ownership of TikTok during this time, preserving this social network in the US.
- In his inaugural speech, he recalled his promise to increase oil production. While signing decrees, he threatened to impose tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and also the BRICS countries. Will Trump start an ‘oil’ and ‘trade’ war?
- This is one of the most important moments and issues of his presidency for him. That is, he links his entire policy to this topic, believing that increased oil production will significantly affect the prices of oil and petroleum products. This, in turn, will affect prices in the United States. He even urged, ‘Don't hurry to buy goods in supermarkets until my inauguration, because then it will all become cheaper’.
The oil issue is a cornerstone of his election campaign.
- The first statement on the war in Ukraine was also made. Trump said that Putin is ‘destroying Russia’, the Russian Federation has lost a million soldiers and Moscow will be worse off if it doesn't come to the negotiating table. Did we hear something new from the US president?
- The information has emerged that he has instructed to organise a telephone conversation with Putin in the near future, to hold a meeting with him in the foreseeable future. Obviously, Trump will raise questions about the end of the war in Ukraine at the meeting, which he also promised.
He probably sees the end as a kind of freeze, which from his point of view would be beneficial to Putin because it would allow to avoid the collapse of the Russian economy.
However, Putin may have a very different view of this. He may think that he is defeating everyone, will win, that he is a ‘great leader’ with lots of world friends.
Frankly, I'm not sure that this kind of Trump's rational approach to dialogue with Putin will lead to any results, and when there are no results, it's hard to say how Trump will react to it.
Bank's name: Bank Millennium S.A.
Address: ul. Stanislawa Zaryna, 2A, 02-593, Warszawa
IBAN: PL97116022020000000216711123
SWIFT: BIGBPLPW
Name of the account holder: Fundacja “KARTA ‘97”
Purpose/title of payment: Donation for statuary aims
You can contact us by the e-mail charter97@gmail.com
