America won’t be able to bully the world into buying more gas

For countries worried that their trade surpluses with America put them in the firing line for tariffs, Donald Trump has a solution: buy American fuel. This month Mr Trump declared that his country’s deficit with the European Union would “disappear easily and quickly” if the bloc did only that. He and his cabinet have pressed other allies, including India and the Philippines, to increase their purchases of American liquefied natural gas (LNG). Scott Bessent, Mr Trump’s treasury secretary, has sought to persuade Japan, South Korea and Taiwan to invest in a vast LNG project in Alaska and commit themselves to purchasing a “substantial portion” of the site’s output.