About a month ago, President Trump tweeted:
"Looks like OPEC is at it again. With record amounts of Oil all over the place, including the fully loaded ships at sea. Oil prices are artificially Very High! No good and will not be accepted!"
When asked to comment on Trump's tweet, Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih told CNBC, "Markets should determine price."
Perhaps Trump later made the kind of call he talked about a decade ago. In 2008, President Trump was interviewed by Jim Cramer about OPEC. In this video (starting 5:38), Trump stated:
"The biggest problem I never hear anybody talk about. I told you about it once. Every time they lower interest rates, the cartel, because I call it a cartel-- the illegal monopoly-- raises oil prices. So the monopoly, because that's what it is, a total illegal monopoly. If businesses ever formed OPEC, everybody would be put in jail. Every time a country hits oil, they are invited into the cartel. It's a disgrace. Now you have oil prices that are going to be over $100, and nobody in this country calls and says. 'Get that goddamn oil price down. You get it down. And you get it down fast.'"
"And you can do it….In the old days, our presidents used to call. We don't call anymore….If spoken to properly, those prices would come down like you wouldn't believe."
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