On Tuesday’s broadcast of Newsmax TV’s “Rob Schmitt Tonight,” White House Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing Peter Navarro discussed Iran and said that “it’s not just that there’s an imminent national security threat because of the ballistic missiles and the nukes that Iran has. It’s also this Iran terror premium that we can stop paying and the world will stop paying” on the price of oil.
Navarro said, “I want to explain the Iran terror premium. When President Trump says that, after this is over, we get to the other side of it, oil prices will not only go back down to the $60 range, they’ll be lower over time. Karoline Leavitt said the same thing today. What they mean is this, Rob, for over 45 years, because of the geopolitical risk associated with Iran’s terror, with its terror through proxies like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, what that has done — and there [are] well-documented studies on this — is effectively raise the price of a barrel of oil, 5 to 15 dollars above what otherwise market conditions would dictate, from pure geopolitical risk associated with Iran. And it’s cost, over these 45 years, something like $10 trillion of slower GDP growth. So, to neutralize the Iranian terror is to get rid of this Iran terror premium on oil. And it all hovers around this Strait of Hormuz and the accident of geography that gives us a terrorist state in Iran near that Strait of Hormuz. And that’s why the President is the first leader to recognize this. And it’s not just that there’s an imminent national security threat because of the ballistic missiles and the nukes that Iran has. It’s also this Iran terror premium that we can stop paying and the world will stop paying.”
He added that “we will and can be energy independent, but, as usual, the boss is playing three-dimensional chess and understands that, basically, having a good global oil market that isn’t subject to the Iran terror premium is really the key to global prosperity. Remember, I told you, Rob, it’s $10 trillion they’ve already extracted from the global economy in terms of gross domestic product drag. That’s got to stop.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
