The attack on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq and Khurais oil installations is turning into a positive for Trump in his ongoing trade dispute with China.
Earlier this month, China instituted a 5% tariff on imports of American oil. According to the EIA, the U.S. exported 8.7 million barrels of crude oil to China in June. This is not a significant amount for China, which is the world’s largest oil importer. However, American oil exports are in their infancy and losing China as a customer would be significant. In fact, Unipec, the trading arm of Chinese oil giant Sinopec, scrambled to resell oil arriving in China from the U.S. on September 5–four days after the tariff went into effect.
Now that Saudi Arabia’s oil output is down, Chinese buyers are turning to the U.S. The attack on Aramco’s oil facilities has affected its supply of Light Arab oil the most. Saudi Arabia is offering its customers other grades of crude oil instead, but some Chinese companies are looking elsewhere for the light oil they wants. According to Reuters, Unipec has chartered four ships to import light crude oil from the United States. Yes, that the same trading company that rushed to resell American light crude instead of paying a tariff on it is now back to buying U.S. crude oil–despite the tariffs.
President Trump can’t claim to know that this would happen, but the cards are falling in his favor.
. Check out my .