WHAT if oil prices rise to more than $370 per barrel due to a protracted war in the Middle East and lingering oil supply disruptions? That nightmarish possibility is now being raised by economists alarmed by the chaotic handling of the Middle East war by Donald Trump’s administration. A protracted war, according to the economists, will make the 3-percent global growth projected by the International Monetary Fund for 2026 as overly optimistic.
A highly disruptive oil supply scenario that will inevitably lead to that dreaded oil price surge will not only wipe out any possibility for global growth. We might as well be staring into the abyss, or staring at either a flat or negative growth. Of course, we all know the grievous impact of a flatlined/negative growth on a world that used to take a 4- or 5-percent global growth as a normal occurrence. The impact would range from economic depressions to political instability — brutish and long — on vast swaths of the world, with the Philippines bearing the brunt of the whiplash.
A $370 oil price is definitely not something within the absorptive capacity of the Gulf oil-dependent Philippine economy, which is among the top 15 most populous nations in the world but with a nominal GDP of less than $500 billion. And with some 2.4 million overseas workers in the troubled Gulf states whose regular remittances form part of the country’s economic lifeline. An oil price of $370 per barrel will put many sectors of the economy at a standstill. The inability of the Gulf states that employ the 2.4 million Filipino workers to sell their oil, gas, oil distillates and fertilizer due to both price shocks and supply disruptions will mean the mass dislocation of the Filipino workers employed there. A double-whammy, to say the least.
I am not a prayerful person. But now, I regularly pray before sleeping. For President Trump to just declare victory as a face-saving measure and to boost his vainglory. Then direct his negotiators to resume the stalled talks and negotiate in good faith with the battle-scarred Iranian mullahs. The mullahs, with a warring tradition of 5,000 years, know that they have won this one despite the obvious physical wreckage from the US-Israeli bombardment. And are maybe ready to negotiate a fair agreement to end the war.
The world at large, the Philippines in particular, needs peace and stability. A long lockdown due to the inability to source oil for transport, for power, for many things else may as well tear the national fabric apart. At this point, all we can do is pray for global stability and peace.
And we can do one other thing, too. And this is to learn dear lessons on how a chaotic, brutish, and unhinged political leadership can wreck global peace and stability. We can easily tie up our current economic misery to the unilateral decision of Trump to help Israel wage a war on Iran without a plan, a justification and an endgame. Oil prices surged and scores of Filipino workers in the Gulf region were repatriated but not without the usual fatalities. The Philippine economy is expected to contract by at least 2 percent this year, with a credit downgrade a real possibility. From now and up to the end of the Marcos Jr. presidency in mid-2028, Arsenio Balisacan has to stop talking nonsense: our supposed coming ascent to an upper middle-class economy.
What, indeed, are the dear lessons Filipinos can learn from a senseless, ruinous war waged based on nothing but megalomania and whimsy? Many.
At the fundamental level, watching the language of politicians with presidential ambitions is imperative.
Simply put, watch out for people who, like Donald Trump, deploy cruel, unhinged and reckless language in the public sphere. “Kill” and “annihilate” are part of the verbal repertoire. Their cruel language is a window to their cruel, reckless and unhinged decision-making process. The option? Choose leaders with civility.
We had a former president, Rodrigo Duterte, whose default position in the choice of presidential verbs was “kill.” He is now in The Hague, before a tribunal that is about to start to try him for “crimes against humanity.”
Another lesson. Choose leaders with utmost fealty to the laws and the Constitution. The former president who is now at The Hague used to describe the Philippine Constitution as a mere “scrap of paper.” It was no coincidence that his government presided over the squandering of P42 billion in public funds in what is now known as the Pharmally scam. His daughter, vice president and declared presidential candidate Sara Duterte, is now facing impeachment over a money mess so mind-boggling and unprecedented even in the corrupted annals of Philippine politics.
Also remember that the construction couple Curlee and Sarah Discaya started making their pile — they cornered P207 billion worth of allegedly corrupted public works contracts from 2016 to mid-2025 — during the Duterte years. Leaders who do not respect the law also assault the bids and awards process to favor alleged crooks like the Discayas.
For a predominantly Catholic nation like us who look up to prayers during times of crisis, another lesson is this. Good leaders do not fight the pontiff. Trump, the enabler of the current Gulf war and the source of our misery and the broader global misery, is demonizing the current pope, Leo XIV, the first American pope, because the pontiff criticized Trump’s senseless war.
Duterte cursed the late Pope Francis — and cursed him repeatedly — for being a good and just pope and a peacemaker.
