Nate Bear Do Not Panic
I heard a statistic the other day that the output of Germany’s energy-intensive industries – things like cement, glass, steel – have collapsed 20% in the last six years. I don’t know why I found it too shocking to be true given the state of elite governance in the west, but I did. Some research confirmed that it is of course true.
And the reason for this rapid de-industrialisation is tragic, but no great surprise. Germany has committed economic suicide because it decided, both independently and through EU decisions it crafted, to cut itself off from Russian gas.
This graph demonstrates the dire straits that Germany is in.
After the pandemic shock, industrial production in the country recovered to baseline levels in 2021 and began to climb, only to plummet after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Europe’s reaction, which saw it effectively ban the import of Russian fossil fuels, (a full legal ban begins next year). Since then, output across all of Germany’s industrial sectors has shrunk significantly, but it is the energy-intensive industries most reliant on oil and gas (the highlighted light blue line in the chart) that have suffered the most. Which means working people are suffering, and losing jobs. Which means they are looking for answers, alternatives and scapegoats. Hence the crushing defeats for the ruling CDU party and the victories for both the anti-immigrant, anti-Ukraine war AfD, and the pro-immigrant, anti-war left party Die Linke in elections at the weekend.
These industries aren’t marginal. For the last fifty years, Germany has been Europe’s industrial juggernaut, the powerhouse economy which, unlike most of the continent, retained a significant industrial base after the privatisation and financialisation of the 1980s and 1990s. The five industries represented by the light blue line (steel, glass, paper, chemicals and refining) are the ones which essentially turn oil and gas into products. They are responsible for 77% of all industrial energy consumption in the country, and close to 20% of Germany’s total industrial production. We’re talking a huge chunk of the Germany economy. And it is collapsing, more or less, month-by-month.
The speed of the collapse has been astonishing. And the cause of this collapse is the decision to ban Russia gas imports and switch to more expensive US liquified natural gas (with Norwegian and Qatari gas making up the balance). On the face of it you could mistake this for a like-for-like situation and simply the replacement of one source with another. The problem with LNG from the US is that it needs first to be liquified, then pumped, loaded and transported 3,000 miles across the seas, which comes at significant cost, a cost borne by industrial importers, the end clients for their products, or both. The result is that expenses rise, businesses go bust, people lose jobs and industrial urban areas wither away. Unemployment in Germany has risen a shocking 30% since 2020 and is now at its highest level in over a decade.
By contrast to expensive US LNG, Russian gas famously arrived directly into the country via the Nordstream pipeline, but that was blown up by Ukrainians, likely working with Ukraine’s secret service, the CIA and MI6. (At the time, you might remember mainstream media screamed for weeks that Russia did it, despite this making absolutely no sense at all and Poland’s current foreign minister tweeting his thanks to the US for the act of sabotage. Good times. But I digress).
Germany, after importing 55% of its gas from Russia in 2021, now imports zero Russian gas, a dubious moral victory when you’re switching to gas bought from Trump’s fossil fuel cronies (more on that soon). And by taking these decisions Germany’s ruling elites have collapsed their own industrial base.
I can hear the complaints now: no Nate, it’s Russia’s fault. What choice did Germany have!? This doesn’t wash. Everything that led Germany and Europe to this point with Russia has been a choice between two options. And one of those options was taken by European political elites, and one wasn’t. This is how it works. Our political leaders are presented with different courses of action and then they make political decisions which have material consequences which determine the future course of events. Cause and effect is real. The war in Ukraine was co-created. Yes, Russia pulled the trigger, but by refusing for so long to deal with reality over Ukraine, European leaders loaded the gun. And after the trigger was pulled, rather than settling the war quickly in Istanbul in April 2022 when a deal was at hand, they kept loading the gun, this time literally through Ukraine, which has become little more than a platform for the west to strike at Russia. Zelensky confirmed as much, listing in a tweet the western systems that had been used in the strikes on Moscow at the weekend. Russia inevitably counterstruck, Zelensky moaned about it, and this tragic, murderous farce continues. And the victims are Ukraine’s young men, 27,000 of whom are now being killed every month according to Poland’s Donald Tusk. Young men packed off to the front in hand-cuffs, all while arms dealers profit and Ukraine collapses demographically.
Perhaps the most absurd element to the gas switcheroo is the underlying premise Europeans are being asked to believe: that even if it costs more and collapses industries, the US is a more honourable, ethical, and secure source of gas than Russia. We’re being asked to believe that tying European energy security to a failing empire and the largest mass murdering enterprise in history is somehow the intelligent strategic and moral choice. It’s a joke.
It didn’t need to come to this. War is never the fault of one party to a conflict, it is always a global failure of statecraft and diplomacy. Germany could have preserved its industry and Europe could have reached an agreement with Russia long before 2022, before 2014 even, and finally at Istanbul in April 2022. An agreement which would have preserved relations with Russia, its inexpensive gas and the jobs and companies that relied on it. Numerous opportunities were purposefully waved away by Europe and the US, including in late 2021, when Putin once again offered talks on a comprehensive deal over Ukrainian neutrality.
But when you look at who has profited from this war, you begin to wonder whether peace ever really stood a chance. My last article looked at how the Ukraine war has provided the perfect canvas for Palantir to worm its way into the vital functions of the Ukrainian state. And Germany’s switch to US LNG has been equally profitable for another corrupt element of the oligarchic American elite: MAGA fossil fuel barons.
In 2021, the US supplied around 5% of all Europe’s gas. That figure is now 26% and rising. And of the gas which comes in as LNG, US imports have doubled from under 30% in 2021 to nearly 60% today. One of the biggest beneficiaries has been Houston-based Cheniere Energy, whose CEO Jack Fusco attended a dinner at Mar-a-Lago for fossil fuel execs in 2024, when Trump asked the room for $1 billion to fund his re-election campaign, promising in response to do whatever the oil barons wanted. An SEC disclosure document shows that subsequent to this meeting, Fusco personally donated $250,000 to Trump’s re-election campaign. The same document shows Fusco’s total contributions across Trump-aligned campaigns running to half a million dollars. It has proven a good investment. From being a marginal supplier of European LNG, by 2025 Cheniere was supplying a full 25% of Europe’s LNG imports.
Another winner of the Ukraine war and Germany’s switch to US LNG has been Venture Global, a Virginia-based gas business. Last year Venture Global donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration and its public affairs spokesperson, Shaylyn Haynes is a former Trump admin official. And since 2022, Venture Global has signed numerous deals to send LNG to Europe, deals which helped more than double its revenue, from $6 billion in 2021 to nearly $14 billion in 2025.
A third big winner is the Pennsylvania fossil fuel company EQT Corporation, run by Toby Rice. Rice personally donated nearly a quarter of a million dollars to MAGA political action committees, and EQT’s corporate bribery arm also gave a quarter of a million dollars to a Trump-aligned super PAC. Rice was also one of the fossil fuel executives at the Mar-a-Lago 2024 dinner. This corruption has also proven very profitable, with EQT’s revenue surging from around $3 billion in 2022 to over $8.5 billion in 2025, with the country now a significant supplier of gas to Europe. As an example, Lithuania, which shares a 300km land border with Russia, now gets a full 40% of its gas from EQT.
Finally, two of the most dishonourable names in history, Chevron and ExxonMobil, have also seized on the war to push US LNG into Europe. Chevron recently sold its first cargo of LNG to Europe and is planning on massively expanding operations in Europe, explicitly tying this expansion to the war in Ukraine, while Exxon is a long-time supplier to Europe. Both companies are also big Trump and Republican donors. In 2024 Exxon bribed candidates with more than $680,000 in donations, while its CEO Darren Woods was also at the Mar-a-Lago dinner. Much closer to Trump is Chevron boss Mike Wirth who according to reporting has regular access to senior Trump officials and maintains frequent contact with treasury secretary Scott Bessent. Bessent said recently he speaks to Wirth to get his help enforcing the sanctions regime on Russia and Iran. Chevron is also leading the on-the-ground push to steal Venezuela’s oil.
With all this in mind you can understand why Trump, despite his early promises to end the war, became relaxed about its continuation, about wrecked relations between Europe and Russia, and Europe jettisoning Russian gas for LNG produced by his mega donors. From US weapons being sold to Ukraine via a NATO slush fund, to American LNG replacing Russian gas, the war in Ukraine has been a hugely profitable enterprise for Trump Inc, his donors and the American war-oil complex.
Whatever happens next with Ukraine, the US war-oil complex will continue to rake in blood money as Europe switches from welfare to warfare. European leaders are now giddily rearming the continent, increasing their purchase of US weapons a sickening 217%, at the same time as many EU governments are enacted deep public sector cuts, with Germany one of the worst offenders. Germany is also the country most rabidly ramping up its military machine, with Germany’s main weapons maker, Rheinmetall, increasing sales 50% in 2024 to €9.75 billion. And to meet this new demand for weapons, Rheinmetall is converting factories that used to make cars into weapons-making facilities. Germany, in essence, has hollowed out its broad industrial base in record time and is now swapping an industrial economy for a war economy.
This all comes as European anti-Russia war propaganda has reached a fever pitch, with European politicians constantly speaking in war-like terms, and a media landscape saturated with articles about the threat from Russia.
While war is not imminent, with no active front-line military build-ups on either side, the direction of travel is frightening.
If another continent-wide war was to return to Europe as a result of reckless, self-defeating policy towards Russia, the usual criminals will profit, and the usual plebs will die.
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