When Dominoes Fall

YouTube is always posting pictures of creative patterns people create with dominoes. Here is one:

But sometimes things in real life have a domino effect. We are seeing that effect in some recent seemingly unrelated moves by the Trump Administration.

One of the immediate changes that took place when President Trump took office was the lifting of many regulations regarding energy production and energy exporting in the United States. That was the first domino. What seemed to be a national issue is now going to have major international implications.

On Tuesday, Bloomberg News posted an article predicting an agreement between the Trump Administration and Poland that would allow Poland to begin importing natural gas from America. That is the second domino.

The article reports:

Polish leaders are betting Donald Trump’s visit to Warsaw starting on Wednesday, two days before the U.S. president meets his Russian counterpart, will bolster their efforts to reduce the nation’s dependence on natural gas from its eastern neighbor.

Less than a month after Poland’s Baltic Sea terminal received its first shipment of U.S. liquefied natural gas, a spot cargo from Cheniere Energy Inc.’s Sabine Pass plant in Louisiana, authorities in Warsaw are mooting ambitious plans. The ideas range from a long-term gas deal with U.S. producers to infrastructure projects linking east European nations reliant on supplies from Moscow-based Gazprom PJSC.

“We’ve tested our ability to receive U.S. gas,” Krzysztof Szczerski, who heads Polish President Andrzej Duda’s office, said on July 1. “So what’s left is a simple business conversation — when, how much and for how much.”

America’s vast energy resources have the potential to change world politics–from OPEC to Russia’s blackmail of Europe by threatening to cut off the gas supply.

I suspect we are going to see a log more dominoes fall in the future.