SAN FRANCISCO
Lee Heidhues 6.28.2025
When Felon Trump leaves the White House he will leave behind a legacy of environmental degradation. Not only in America but around planet Earth.
Felon Trump is the willing handmaiden of Big Oil. He loves the billionaires who have funded his three presidential campaigns and does their dirty work with no prompting whatsoever.
As the Wall Street Journal reports Trump is pulling all the political levers he can “to quash the European Union (EU) flagship environmental rules.“
What infuriates Big Oil the most is the clunkily titled Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD). Big Oil companies whose revenue exceeds 522M are being required to “pinpoint and curb human rights violations and the climate impact on their operations and global supply chains” reports the Wall Street Journal.
Big Oil Exxon Mobil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods met with Trump shortly after he took office in January. He told Trump, “he believed CSDDD would bog down U.S. Companies in Europe.”
That was all Trump needed to hear and he is now whining about “unfair regulatory burdens placed on American companies.” And doing everything he can to kowtow to his Big Oil benefactors.
Excerpted from the Wall Street Journal 6.28.2025
Oil executives enlisted President Trump in fights against clean-car rules, drilling restraints and climate laws from New York to California. Now, they have won his support in their effort to quash Europe’s flagship environment rules.
American oil chieftains and their lobbyists have urged Trump and his cabinet members to use ongoing trade talks with the European Union to push for a rollback of two major climate laws in the European Green Deal. Trump officials have pressed their EU counterparts to scale back those laws in recent negotiations, according to people familiar with the matter.
The administration’s willingness to give priority to the interests of the oil executives—alongside those of several other industries—in a dispute with a vital trading partner shows how influential they have become in Trump’s second term. Oil donors sent millions of dollars to Trump’s third presidential campaign last year, and the administration in turn has tried to shore up demand for their products and rescinded U.S. environmental rules.
Lee's Perspective 