WILD CARDS - The Power Surge: Energy, Opportunity, and the Battle for America's Future - page 188

growth are beginning to turn inward to i nd their future sources of
economic growth; in the process, they are becoming more willing to
challenge the global trade rules that helped them get to where they are
today. h is has consequences for multinationals, which depend on an
open system for trade and investment but i nd themselves progressively
shut out of lucrative markets, particularly in China. Once easily counted
on to defend Chinese aberrations and thus to lobby against any U.S.
retaliation, some have started to question whether parts of the deal are
doing them more harm than good. 18
It is not dii cult to imagine the global system of relatively open trade
in energy—which has emerged so powerfully in the wake of the 1970s
energy crises that it seems the only way energy can work—eventually
retrenching. h ere are already signs of moves in this direction, includ-
ing U.S. debates over whether to bar exports of natural gas, crude oil,
gasoline, and diesel, and Chinese l irtation with more rigid approaches
to trade in oil. Rules put in place to deal with climate change have also
started to fracture the global system for energy trade. Mandates that
discriminate among dif erent sources of fuel according to their green-
house gas emissions, whether applied to Canadian oil sands or Brazilian
biofuels, inevitably inject politics into trade rules in ways that oil trade
has not been subjected to before.
Indeed, the modern system for trade in energy, and particularly oil,
may be an anomaly. Open and l exible global oil markets are a recent
invention, dating back to the 1980s (and in some ways to the 1970s)
but not much farther than that. h ose markets developed in remarkably
benign circumstances. Oil prices not only were low for the vast majority
of the 1980s and 1990s but also were remarkably stable. At the same
time, the United States had no practical option other than to depend
on oil from the Middle East. A globally integrated system, anchored in
l exible markets, was not just a desirable development; it was one the
United States naturally encouraged.
But the conditions in which the present system emerged may be
eroding. Oil prices are much higher than they were in the 1980s and
1990s, and, perhaps more important, they are far more volatile. With
Saudi Arabia and its partners no longer either able or willing to sta-
bilize markets, prices regularly undergo vicious swings, raising public