Make No Mistake, the Oil Slump Is Going to Hurt the US Too | Casey Research.
f you only paid attention to the mainstream media, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the US is going to get away from the collapse in oil prices scot free. According to popular belief, America is even going to be a net winner from cheaper oil prices, because they will act like a tax cut for US consumers. Or so we are told.
In reality, though, many of the jobs the US energy boom has created in the last few years are now at risk, and their loss could drag the economy into a recession.
The view that cheaper oil automatically boosts US GDP is overly simplistic. It assumes that US consumers will spend the money they save at the pump on US-made goods rather than imports. And it assumes consumers won’t save some of this windfall rather than spending it.
Those are shaky enough. But the story that cheap fuel for our cars is good for us is also based on an even more dangerous assumption: that the price of oil won’t fall far enough to wipe out the US shale sector, or at least seriously impact the volume of US oil production.
