This is the latter.
Great if we could sell them oil, we’d have ‘em by the balls like OPEC had us.
Merkel and Macron have been fawning over Putin lately. All are in cohoots to save Iran Nuke Deal. All three plus China bashing USA for leaving Climate Deal and defending Jerusalem for Israel as well.
Bypassing US sanctions, Macron just promised billions of French dollars to (very corrupt) Russian-oligarch run businesses at the St. Petersburg Econ forum.
Germany is building “Nordstream 2” gas pipeline with Russia despite USA objections. Judging by this behavior we should keep up a trade war with the E.U. - not just China.
Germany also needs to pay up for NATO or start fending for themselves militarily. They barely pay any percentage of their GDP! France at the very least has got the memo and Macron has promised to pay up.
So sick of Russian and Chinese govts. And our European “allies” rip the U.S. off too. So annoying.
Words in Beijing is that Americans wants China to buy from America to sabotage Chinese energy agreement with Russi.
Liquified Natural Gas would be great for both US and China. We have an incredible amount of it, and the technology to liquify and transport it. The vast majority of Chinese aren’t near a pipeline, but LNG can be trucked in to just about anywhere. We HAD only 1 LNG port to export the stuff, but 5 new ones have been added.