Petrol had a radiant future but that future was properly over by 1950. Just a note on Russia first. There may have been 4x in the last 80 years where Russia or a Russian saved the US or saved the world. 1. Stopping the German army in WWII- would the US have prevailed if this hadn't happened and at what cost? 2. Russian Sub Commander disobeys order stops WWIII in Bay of Pigs refusing to launch- US was dropping depth charges on this nuclear ICBM carrying sub. 3. USSR peacefully dissolves itself ending the cold war which could have ended hot and nuclear. 4. Russia may have acted to at least delay an unnecessary war in Iran which could turn nuclear as its a Russian client state- people from the W. admin were pushing this insane war, Romney was pushing it, Hillary was pushing it and it was for petrol when even though Russia is caught up in petrol too, its not remotely worth the risk for an obsolete power source like petrol. It is hard enough to form a state, imagine what it is like to peacefully dissolve one. That dissolution happened because back in 1970 when 2000 economists told the world that capitalism was over because capital was dead because labor was dead due to the automation in place even then. In this context it became very clear that the US had become everything it had accused the USSR of being, namely a top down totally centralized planned economy, so with capitalism or resultant tech leading to the end of the scarcity problem and therefore the end of capitalism the USSR could peacefully dissolve which it essentially did as capitalism self vanquished. The only reason that petrol made it past 1970 is dead capital needed artificial scarcity to knock people into place with a plantation type set up- remember slavery really only ended in about 1950 in the US. In 1970 people could have one income, support 5 kids and put them all through school with no college debt and have a stable job and no medical debt or bankruptcy and pay off their house and actually be able to retire and have a quality of living that was better than their parents for social mobility. Now even with two people working full time we don't have any of these things now. The competitive wage is the wage that allows the worker to become a competitor- we were a lot closer then. What happened? The literal theft of our society and its transformation into a kleptocracy in large part through petrol is what happened where we could have had the almost unlimited abundance and peace if we had followed the prescription of the economists to transition the population then to high indexed guaranteed annual incomes from birth to death- but in that situation capital would have been as obviously dead as it actually was so we switched to a phony kleptocracy based on the artificial scarcity of petrol. What do you think the a 400 billion dollar a year drain on the economy and public sector that is cumulative will do other than hollow out the public sector and quality of life that could put dead capital in its place 6 ft under? The reason we don't have practically unlimited abundance and peace is almost all petrol centered on the theft through petrol- even now petrol corrupted finance is holding hostage pensions. Sure petrol worked up to a certain point, even with its cannibalistic or catabolic undermining of economy with permanently low economic efficiency, but after a point (roughly 1950) it was all cumulative downside. Petrol got us a ways down the road but it was always hollowing out the public sector. Has there ever been a year where we've given it less than say 400 billionin the US alone? To a very real extent its like you are physically pushing around your own car every day. Instead of your car driving you you're pushing it in order to keep you down by hollowing out your tax base in order to check you so you can't check dead capital. Imagine working more now than we did before language and tools in this time of quantum AI. Still smoking tail pipes in this quantum age? Notice what is out of place? Its obsolete cancerous capital. It also helped keep the Middle East relevant on the world stage- quite a distraction for peace and quite an excuse for imperialism but all of it unnecessary. So say what you want about communism, capitalism died in 1970 after it served its purpose with the solution through automation of the economic problem. But petrol is an attempt to take us back to the cotton gin and the plantation, its an example of tech that works against people. So China stands up to obsolete petrol, petrol can't compete with radically more efficient green energy any more than buggies could compete with mag lev trains. It will provide an insurmountable advantage on cost of goods. The tarrifs are only there to keep much more competitive economies from causing another Western financial collapse over insuring the bad debt of economically stranded petrol assets just like last time. But its just a delaying tactic.
