Ross: Can America really withstand $200 a barrel?

Saudi Arabia thinks we’ve been a little too nosy about the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi. He’s the Washington Post op-ed columnist who wrote, for example, that the Saudis should stop the war in Yemen. Also, that Saudi princes were becoming billionaires by inflating construction contracts. And that books should not be censored in Saudi Arabia. And that the Saudi Crown Prince should try a little humility.

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These opinions would strike most of us as pretty tame, and yet it now appears some in the Saudi government felt threatened enough to make Khashoggi disappear.  Raising the question: Should we be sending billions of dollars worth of weapons to a regime that can’t tolerate a few critical op-eds?

But now, that regime is warning us that if we get too uppity about this, it could push the price of oil to $200 a barrel. And I ask myself: Can they still do that? I thought we were almost self-sufficient when it came to oil.

Plus we have a president who played hardball with North Korea, and who played hardball with Turkey to get pastor Brunson back, who even played hardball with our friends to get better trade deals.

If Saudi Arabia tried to charge us $200 a barrel, we’ll just hop into our solar-sedans. Or our clean coal coupes. We’ll think of something.

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