Sir,
If you tax all of my competitors, but not me, you are subsidizing my business. And who pays for that? The consumer does.
Now if you are digging iron ore out of the ground and a foreign country dumps cheap iron ore on the market with the intent of destroying you and creating a monopoly, that puts everyone that depends on a free and unrestricted access to iron ore at risk.
It is vital to the national interest to retain certain vital capabilities, energy would be one of those.
Now, my proposal is not to guarantee a profit, but to guarantee a break-even point for a finite amount of time. We know its finite, because the Saudis can’t sustain their tactic for more than a few years. The American citizen would be spending slightly more for oil than now, in order to save a lot more on oil for decades into the future.
A tariff on foreign oil would have the same effect of setting a minimum floor for domestic oil, but it would in all likelihood be far more protective and costly to the consumer.
The only risk to the citizen in my plan would be that oil would stay below $40/barrel forever and they would get stuck paying $40/barrel for oil. That is a punishment that most Americans would be willing to risk if not wholeheartedly welcome. But the far more likely outcome would be oil popping back up above $40/barrel, at which tax payer expenditure would be zero and purchased assets could be sold at a profit to the tax payer.
subsidy
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/subsidy
money that is paid usually by a government to keep the price of a product or service low or to help a business or organization to continue to function
Words already have meaning, making up your own is rather pointless.
While a directed import tax is a benefit, and typically unfair, it is not a subsidy.
It does not take money from those not involved in the transaction and purchase of the products, and give it to those who are.
but to guarantee a break-even point for a finite amount of time.
What you may not understand is there is no single breakeven point. The cost to produce oil varies from field to field. The value of the different crude oil varies in qualities and locations, as much as double the price.
The oil industry has been through many booms and bust. I know, they have affected my job more than once. But what you suggest hurts the industry in the long run. And it hurts the refining industry immediately. The industry making the actual fuel is no less important than the one producing the feedstock.