Oil execs dump on Trump behind his back while praising him in public: CNBC

Although oil company executives have effusively praised President Donald Trump's deregulatory agenda in public, CNBC reports that a survey conducted by the Dallas Federal Reserve reveals they are far more pessimistic about his economic policies than they are letting on.

In particular, the executives took shots at Trump's erratic economic policies of enacting and then retracting tariffs on foreign goods seemingly on a whim.

"The administration’s chaos is a disaster for the commodity markets,” one executive told the Dallas Fed. ”‘Drill, baby, drill’ is nothing short of a myth and populist rallying cry. Tariff policy is impossible for us to predict and doesn’t have a clear goal. We want more stability.”

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Another executive interviewed by the Dallas Fed singled out Trump's tariffs against foreign steel as being particularly problematic for the industry.

“Uncertainty around everything has sharply risen during the past quarter,” they said. “Planning for new development is extremely difficult right now due to the uncertainty around steel-based products.”

Another executive interviewed by the Dallas Fed said that they were taken aback by Trump's goal to lower the price of oil to just $50 a barrel, which they said would wreck their firm's profitability.

"The threat of $50 oil prices by the administration has caused our firm to reduce its 2025 and 2026 capital expenditures,” they said. ”‘Drill, baby, drill’ does not work with $50 per barrel oil. Rigs will get dropped, employment in the oil industry will decrease, and U.S. oil production will decline as it did during COVID-19.”

CNBC adds that the scathing assessment of Trump "stood in contrast to major oil companies’ public comments at the industry’s big energy conference in Houston earlier this month."