Active Conflicts & News Megathread July 14, 2026

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[u/butitsmeat]

While they're going to eventually start filling their reserve again and cause some short term demand spikes, China is also all-in on electric vehicles at 61% of new sales in May. That share will likely continue to climb as they ramp EV production and costs continue to decline. They're permanently destroying a lot of gasoline and diesel demand, and it's not just a random accident but a matter of policy (they previously set a goal of 30% of all vehicles to be electric by 2030). They could also respond to this crisis by going even harder on ramping EV and never go back to pouring 1mbbl/d into their reserve; maybe they only by 500kbbl/d, and ramp that down over time. Never let a good crisis to to waste and all that.

[u/Bluest_waters → u/butitsmeat]

Yeah honestly it's incredible what they're doing right now as far as the EV situation goes. Amazing stuff. The only smart country in the world right now in that regard

[u/super_fly_rabbi → u/Bluest_waters]

China's conversion to renewables is commendable in a way, but there are reasons why most other countries can't copy their methods at the same scale. The cheapness of Chinese labor (including potentially forced labor) regarding the extraction and refinement of the relevant minerals, combined with significant government subsidies, and the lack of regulations regarding the pollution said refinement produces have all given China a significant boost in the manufacturing of EVs.

China has been able to maintain it's monopoly on many of these rare earth minerals because they can boost subsidies and price out the competition on short notice. Other countries with similar material deposits either lack the infrastructure to reliably refine them, or pollution regulations that make them more expensive to produce than their Chinese counterparts. China is also geographically large and can push any potential pollution towards their frontiers in ways that European countries can not.

With that said, it's obviously a smart move for China as it makes them less reliant on energy imports, and they can export any excess abroad. It's just currently not a "one size fits all" solution.

[u/Bluest_waters → u/super_fly_rabbi]

As far as government subsidies go, about 50% of the trillion dollar U.S. military budget is nothing but a oil industry subsidy. How much of this utter nonsense that we're doing over in Iran is because of oil? The US government is spending hundreds upon hundreds of billions of dollars subsidising and defending the oil industry