Do you think that if every country had done like Brazil oil would be trading at $80 per barrel?
Every county couldn't have done what Brazil did, most of them don't have the ability to expand their oil production.
If every country had so expanded it, than oil would be less than $80/barrel, all that oil sloshing on to the world market would drive prices down. And greater use of alternatives would drive oil prices down as well, but possibly for Brazil, and definitely for many countries including the US, would cost more than the amount it contributes to savings through lower oil prices.
Do you think if the US had done like Brazil our trade deficit would be as high as it is?
We had not ability to do what Brazil did, certainly not without opening up just about every prohibited area to oil drilling (and then it would probably be too little to late to match what Brazil did as a percentage of each countries energy economy).
If we did what they did in terms of pushing alcohol as a fuel (which is probably what your talking about, I don't think your pushing more oil production too hard), it would have reduced our imports of oil, but would have reduced our exports in corn rather directly, other farm products at one remove (after the land shifts to corn for alcohol), and other types of products more indirectly (as the higher costs for food and fuel, push US production costs up). Even with these effects it could have decreased our trade deficit, at the expense of our total volume of trade and more to the point at the expense of the economic well-being of Americans. |
