Trump’s crooked ‘art of the deal’ with Big Oil  

The American people have seen several big oil scandals over the last century. We have survived Teapot Dome, the collapse of Enron, windfall profiteering during the 1970s oil crisis, Exxon Valdez, Deepwater Horizon and more. But President Trump’s deal with Big Oil is the most corrupt in our history. Its cost pervades everything from household budgets to public health, national security, the climate, and the future.

During his first term and now in his second, Trump has delivered hundreds of billions of dollars in favors to the industry, including tax breaks and subsidies, access to more federal land and waters, a major rollback of environmental regulations, the suppression of competition from clean energy technologies, access to Venezuela’s oil reserves, and of course the very profitable Iran war. No one has stopped him.

This arrangement is clearly unethical, if not illegal. That became obvious in April 2024 when candidate Trump offered the oil industry a deal, telling its executives that if they gave $1 billion to his campaign, he would deliver their wish list when he recaptured the White House.  

He has been delivering ever since.  

The deal betrays the middle- and lower-income voters who helped elect him. By cutting important social programs and safety nets to pay for the oil industry’s tax breaks and subsidies and by raising consumer prices, Trump’s energy policies are transferring wealth from American families to one of the world’s most powerful industries.

Oil companies ended up providing nearly $100 million to Trump’s campaign organization and affiliated political action committees, not counting dark-money contributions. They also gave nearly $12 million to Trump’s inauguration and have continued contributing millions more to Trump’s PAC since he took........

© The Hill