From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Harold Hutchison

Canada should expect Tariffs starting April 1

Secretary of Commerce-designate Howard Lutnick told a Senate committee that the threat of imposing a 25% tariff was to get Canada and Mexico to “respect” the United States and stop the flow of fentanyl into the country.

President Donald Trump nominated Lutnick, who rebuilt Cantor Fitzgerald after the financial services firm suffered massive losses in the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, to serve as Secretary of Commerce Nov. 19. Lutnick told Democratic Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan during a Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee hearing that the threatened tariffs were intended to “create action” on two major issues.

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“The short-term issue is illegal migration and worse, even still, fentanyl coming into this country and killing over a hundred thousand Americans,” Lutnick said. “There’s no war we could have that would kill a hundred thousand Americans. The president is focused on ending fentanyl coming into the country. You know that the labs in Canada are run by Mexican cartels. So, this tariff model is simply to shut their borders with respect, respect America. We are your biggest trading partner, show us the respect, shut your border and end fentanyl coming into this country.”

“So it is not a tariff, per se,” Lutnick continued. “It is an action of domestic policy. Shut your border and stop allowing fentanyl into our country, killing our people. So this is a separate tariff to create action from Mexico and action from Canada, and as far as I know, they are acting swiftly and if they execute, there will be no tariff. If they don’t, then there will be.”

Drug overdoses killed 105,007 Americans in 2023, which is slightly fewer than the 107,941 who were killed in 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) seized over 55 million fentanyl pills in 2023 alone, CBS News reported.

One kilogram of fentanyl can reportedly kill up to a half-million people, according to the DEA.

Almost 22,000 pounds of fentanyl were seized at the U.S. border in fiscal year 2024 with another 4,537 pounds being seized in fiscal year 2025 to date, according to statistics released by United States Customs and Border Protection. Upon taking office on Jan. 20, Trump issued several executive orders, including designating Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, declaring a national emergency on the southern border and setting policy on securing the border.

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

During his campaign and since taking office, President Donald Trump often repeated his desire to bring back the same “drill, baby, drill” oil and gas agenda that characterized his first term in office.

But that term began 8 long years ago and much has changed in the domestic oil business since then. Current market realities are likely to mitigate the industry’s response to Trump’s easing of the Biden administration’s efforts to restrict its activities. 

Trump’s second term begins as the upstream segment of the industry has enjoyed three years of strong profitability and overall production growth by employing a strategy of capital discipline, technology deployment and the capture of economies of scale in the nation’s big shale play areas. Companies like, say, ExxonMobil and Oxy and their peers are unlikely to respond to the easing of government regulations by discarding these strategies that have brought such financial success in favor of moving into a new drilling boom.

This bias in favor of maintenance of the status quo is especially likely given that the big shale plays in the Permian Basin, Eagle Ford Shale, Bakken Shale, Haynesville and the Marcellus/Utica region have all advanced into the long-term development phases of the natural life cycle typical of every oil and gas resource play over the past 175 years. Absent the discovery of major new shale or other types of oil-or-natural gas-bearing formations, a new drilling boom seems quite unlikely under any circumstances.

One market factor that could result in a somewhat higher active rig count would be a sudden rise in crude oil prices, if it appears likely to last for a long period of time. Companies like Exxon, Chevron, Oxy and Diamondback Energy certainly have the capability to quickly activate a significant number of additional rigs to take advantage of long-term higher prices.

But crude prices are set on a global market, and that market has appeared over-supplied in recent months with little reason to believe the supply/demand equation will change significantly in the near future. Indeed, the OPEC+ cartel has been forced to postpone planned production increases several times over the past 12 months as an over-supplied market has caused prices to hover well below the group’s target price.

But it is wrong to think the domestic oil industry will not respond in any way to Trump’s efforts to remove Biden’s artificial roadblocks to energy progress. Trump’s efforts to speed up permitting for energy projects of all kinds are likely to result in a significant build-out of much-needed new natural gas pipeline capacity, natural gas power generation plants and new LNG export terminals and supporting infrastructure.

Instead of another four years of “drill, baby, drill,” the Trump efforts to speed energy development seem certain to result in four years of a “build, baby, build” boom.

Indeed, the industry is already responding in a big way in the LNG export sector of the business. During Trump’s first week in office, LNG exporter Venture Global launched what is the largest energy IPO by value in U.S. history, going public with a total market cap of $65 billion.

With five separate export projects currently in various stages of development, all in South Louisiana, Venture Global plans to become a major player in one of America’s major growth industries in the coming years. Trump’s Day 1 reversal of Biden’s senseless permitting pause on LNG infrastructure is likely to kick of a number of additional LNG projects by other operators.

The Trump effect took hold even before he took office when the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation entered into an exclusive agreement in early January with developer Glenfarne to advance the $44 billion Alaska LNG project. The aim is to start to deliver gas in 2031, with LNG exports following shortly thereafter.

America’s oil and gas industry has demonstrated it can consistently grow overall production to new records even with a falling rig count in recent years. Now it must grow its related infrastructure to account for the rising production.

That’s why Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” mantra is likely to transform into “build, baby, build” in the months and years to come.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.