The Whole Racket

War profits for Big Oil, more money for Putin, climate sabotage, and a World Cup no one wants to attend.

Good morning! Donald Trump spent the last few days reminding the world that when he touches a crisis, it does not get resolved. It metastasizes. The latest live updates out of the Iran conflict make that painfully clear. The United States is now openly boasting that it has “completely halted” Iran’s seaborne trade, while Iranian officials are threatening to expand retaliation beyond the Strait of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf, the Sea of Oman, and the Red Sea. This is no longer just a standoff over one choke point. Trump has turned it into a broader threat to regional shipping and the global economy, all while still babbling that the war is “close to over.” Close to over in the same sense that a kitchen fire is close to over when it reaches the front door.

If you were wondering why the Islamabad talks collapsed, one of the more revealing analyses circulating suggests the answer is almost insultingly simple: the United States showed up calling it negotiation while still apparently demanding surrender. According to Middle East Eye, the American side came in with a repackaged list of demands that sounded a whole lot like the old list of demands: reopen Hormuz on Washington’s terms, hand over enriched uranium, accept zero enrichment, and sever ties with regional allies, with little meaningful relief on offer in return. Sort of a hostage note written in State Department font.

Trump and Netanyahu are now trapped by the same escalation logic. Both sold their respective camps a fantasy of total victory. Both radicalized their bases into believing that compromise is weakness. And now both men are discovering the obvious: once you promise domination, anything short of total submission looks like defeat. So they keep the war alive in one form or another, not because they have a strategy, but because politically they can no longer afford reality.

It gets even uglier, because Trump’s little excursion has not merely inflamed the region, it has widened the battlefield. The Financial Times reporting indicates that Iran secretly acquired a Chinese-built spy satellite system that helped monitor U.S. and allied bases around the time of Iranian strikes. If that reporting holds, then Trump did not intimidate Iran into isolation; he helped create conditions for deeper foreign technical support, deniable Chinese involvement, and a much more internationalized conflict. So congratulations to the administration: in trying to look strong, it may have made the war smarter, broader, and more dangerous for everyone else.

One of the most disgusting through-lines in all of this is the oil windfall. The same conflict that is jolting energy markets, raising costs for consumers, and shredding what remains of public confidence is showering money on petro-states and fossil-fuel giants. According to analysis cited by the Guardian, the world’s top 100 oil and gas companies were pulling in more than $30 million an hour in excess profit during the first month of the war, for a total of $23 billion in windfall gains in March alone. If oil stays around $100 a barrel, those companies are projected to rake in $234 billion in extra profit by the end of 2026. That money is not falling from the sky; it is coming straight out of the pockets of ordinary people paying more to fill their tanks, heat their homes, and keep businesses running.

The winners are exactly the people you would expect in a system this corrupt. Saudi Aramco alone is projected to clear $25.5 billion in war profits, on top of the grotesque sums it already makes as the giant state-backed oil machine of one of the world’s premier petro-monarchies. Three Russian companies, Gazprom, Rosneft, and Lukoil, stand to make $23.9 billion, a direct financial gift to Vladimir Putin’s treasury while Russia continues its war in Ukraine. ExxonMobil is projected to haul in $11 billion in unearned war profits, Chevron $9.2 billion, and Shell $6.8 billion. Exxon’s market value reportedly jumped by $118 billion, while Shell gained $34 billion. So while families wince at the gas pump and governments scramble to cushion the blow, the oil majors are collecting bonuses so large they almost feel satirical.

That is the whole scam in miniature: war drives up prices, consumers get punished, public budgets get squeezed, and the corporations and petro-states who helped build this dependency laugh all the way to the bank. As Global Witness put it, “Moments of global crisis continue to translate into bumper profits for oil majors while ordinary people pay the price.” Or as the UN climate chief Simon Stiell warned, fossil-fuel dependency is “ripping away national security and sovereignty, and replacing it with subservience and rising costs.” This is not some unfortunate side effect of the crisis; t is the business model. The chaos Trump helped ignite becomes their windfall and our inflation.

Since it is tax day, that whole scam lands with extra force. Americans are rushing to file their returns while learning that the average household sent more than four thousand dollars of its federal income taxes to military-related spending last year. Four thousand dollars. More for militarism than for so many of the things people actually need to survive with dignity. So we fund the war machine up front, then we pay again when the war machine destabilizes oil markets, then we get told there is no money for schools, public health, disaster relief, or environmental protection. It is a beautiful little circular masterpiece of national abuse. At some point, we must stop taking part in our own abuse.

The Trump administration is not content to merely wreck alliances, destabilize the economy, sour tourism, and enrich oil barons. No, now it also wants to speedrun climate collapse. France 24 reports the administration pressuring the World Bank and IMF to back away from climate-finance goals and return to the warm, familiar embrace of oil, gas, and coal. After helping trigger another war-driven energy shock, they want to use the fallout as an excuse to deepen fossil-fuel dependence. Create chaos, weaponize the consequences, and then call the destruction “core mission.” It is the same sick joke every time.

The world is noticing. Boy, is it noticing. Damage to America’s reputation is no longer some abstract diplomatic concern for think-tank lunches and panel discussions moderated by men named Brent. It is showing up in public sentiment, allied politics, and hotel bookings. The broad pattern is unmistakable: trust in the United States is eroding, allies are openly contemplating life without Washington, and foreign publics increasingly view America as unstable, untrustworthy, and governed by maniacs with access to aircraft carriers.

That reputational collapse is now so real that even Giorgia Meloni appears to be gaining politically by putting daylight between herself and Trump. Think about that for a moment. Trump has become so internationally toxic that distancing yourself from him can boost a right-wing European leader’s popularity. In Italy, papers across the spectrum are treating the Meloni rupture as a politically useful break. The same anti-Trump sentiment now depressing World Cup tourism is also reshaping allied politics abroad. America’s damage is no longer abstract. It is showing up in polls, headlines, and hotel bookings.

Perhaps the most darkly comic symbol of the moment is this: the United States is co-hosting the World Cup, and hotels are still slashing room rates because demand is falling short. The reasons are almost too perfect: expensive match tickets, inflation fears, visa and border anxiety, anti-American sentiment, and the added instability of the Iran war. Even the World Cup is not enough to overcome the sense that America has become too costly, too chaotic, and too hostile to bother with. The country can still stage the spectacle, but it can no longer assume the world wants to buy the experience. There is an extra layer of irony here, because Trump built his mythology and much of his fortune on selling branded luxury, aspiration, and the fantasy of glamorous arrival. Now, under his administration, even one of the biggest tourism and hospitality events on Earth cannot reliably fill rooms. The salesman who spent decades marketing hotels, resorts, and gilded experiences has helped turn the United States itself into a harder sell. Trump, who made his fortune selling rooms, has helped make the entire country harder to book.

Which brings us, inevitably, to JD Vance, a man who seems to wake up every morning and ask himself how best to make an already embarrassing administration feel even more spiritually diseased. Only Vance could look at the backlash from Trump attacking the Pope and conclude that the smart move was to attack the Pope more carefully. After Trump lashed out at Pope Leo, Vance jumped in to explain that the Pope should be more “careful” when speaking about theology. This from a relatively recent convert to Catholicism who has now decided that his true vocation is adjunct professor of corrective papal studies. It is so perfectly Trumpist: nobody knows more than the generals, the scientists, the judges, or, now, the Pope. Expertise is fake unless it flatters the regime. Moral authority is suspect unless it blesses the bombs. If you cannot win the argument, just mansplain the Gospel to the Vatican. What could go wrong?

Even better, these people cannot coordinate their lies for five consecutive minutes. When Trump posted that blasphemous image of himself styled like Jesus, he reportedly tried to explain it away as him being depicted as some kind of doctor connected to the Red Cross. Then Vance, ever eager to be the smuggest little janitor in the propaganda department, offered a totally different defense, saying it was just a joke. So one explanation was, “you fools misunderstood the healer imagery,” and the other was, “lighten up, it was irony.”

That is the whole story of this administration, isn’t it? It breaks things. It breaks diplomacy by confusing coercion with negotiation, and it breaks the economy by detonating energy shocks and then pretending oil profiteering is market wisdom. America’s reputation breaks until even allies gain politically by dumping the president in public. It breaks tourism to the point where even a World Cup cannot fill hotel rooms. It breaks climate policy by using crisis to force institutions back toward fossil-fuel addiction. Then, while the wreckage burns, it turns around and lectures the rest of the world about strength, faith, truth, and leadership.

The hubris would be astonishing if it were not so routine. The incompetence would be funny if it were not so expensive, and the cruelty would be unbelievable if they had not spent years proving exactly who they are.

Here we are on tax day, paying for the wars, paying for the gas, paying for the inflation, paying for the reputational damage, paying for the climate rollback, paying for the privilege of being governed by people who think the answer to every self-created disaster is more swagger and less conscience.