the wider story is slightly misleading normally United States exports $5.3 billion of oil to China (making up 2.3% of China's oil imports) 5M barrels is ~ $500,000,000 part of the reason refineries globally were shut down is because of covid, Hurricane Ida took out a refinery in Louisiana and a fire burned down another in Philadelphia also because Biden wants to end fossil fuels, some refiners have repurposed their facilities and making biofuel instead of gasoline,and nobody is going to bring the mothballed refineries back online as that's financial investment unlikely to pay off. so it's still a treasonous thing to be doing, but it's also a balance of trade thing, and the fact that only China has any spare refining capacity right now I'd be interested in what excuse the WH staff dream up to sell this to normies as "a good thing" and to blame Trump somehow