Joe Biden’s mishandling of the economy is reflected both in his plunging approval ratings as well as the press reporting in recent days.

Even our allies north of the border are weighing in. In an article titled “Alberta Premier Mocks Biden for Refusing Canadian Oil,” Chris Queen explains how the U.S. went from a net energy exporter to record high gas prices and a reliance on oil imported from other countries.

Soaring gas prices do not seem to faze administration officials who are laser-focused on pushing electric vehicles. Queen states that the Biden administration knows exactly what it’s doing in catering to the environmental lobby’s push for green energy, which is both infeasible and expensive today.

In addressing a Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Premier Jason Kenney of Alberta, a conservative, said he was proud that his province is home to the world’s third-largest proven and probable oil reserves - about 180 billion barrels - and one of the world’s largest reserves of natural gas. Kenney slammed the Biden administration’s energy policies, explaining that “after the United States has spent hundreds of billions of dollars securing Persian Gulf energy over the past 50 years, it turns out that the solution to the challenge of energy security is your closest friend and ally!”

The premier said the invasion of Ukraine painfully reminds us that dictators in charge of vast stores of energy are dangerous for everyone. If the U.S. isn’t going to drill for its own oil, he wonders why America won’t export from a friendly country that’s close by rather than from faraway nations that hate America.

A recent BNN Bloomberg article titled “Age of Scarcity” explains how the ties that bind the global economy together, and deliver goods in abundance across the world, are unraveling at a frightening pace. It cites the COVID lockdowns and the war in Ukraine as factors contributing to the slumping global GNP projections but says these factors do not last forever.

The underlying problem, it says, is that we live in a world increasingly divided along geopolitical fault lines it only looks to get worse. Future Bloomberg projections point to a significantly poorer and less productive planet. Additionally, it says inflation will likely be higher and more volatile.

Robert Koopman, the World Trade Organization’s chief economist, expects that a “reorganized globalization” will come with a cost. A rollback of globalization to late 1990s levels, he states, will leave the world 3.5 percent poorer than if trade stabilizes at its current share of output. He warns us to brace for a world of lower growth, higher prices and increased volatility.

In an opinion titled “The Bitter Fruits of Devaluation,” Arthur Laffer, co-founder of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity and an economist with the Heritage Foundation, explains how inflation is a form of currency devaluation. Laffer wrote that in 1972, the Nixon administration intentionally devalued the dollar in the mistaken belief that a cheaper dollar would spur growth and employment while reducing the U.S. trade deficit.

Instead, it created economic havoc, causing a stock-market train wreck, a collapse in worker incomes and galloping inflation. The 1970s was also a decade of increasing regulation, a vast expansion of the welfare state, wage and price controls - which made inflation worse - and rising global tariffs.

Laffer says inflation thrusts a double whammy on salaries and lifetime savings. In the past 12 months workers have seen the purchasing power of their paychecks decline by 3 percent - a faster pace than at any time in at least a decade. The strategy of demand-siders - that Biden’s multibillions of government spending and welfare programs are putting more money into people’s pockets - is wrong since it translates into higher consumer demand, which means higher corporate profits.

Along with all the dismal projections and written analysis, America’s current economic decline was best captured by a front-page illustration in the New York Post last week showing Joe Biden riding atop a locomotive in the middle of a train wreck.

The image included a warning that “Joe Biden’s road to record-high gas prices may soon lead to rationing,” and the subtitle stated: “Every Biden administration policy choice has contributed significantly to this week’s news that gas prices exceed $4 a gallon in all 50 states.”

Entering the summer vacation season, the headlines on a souring economy may well spell disaster for Democrats in the upcoming midterms.

By Jim Zbick | tneditor@tnonline.com

The foregoing opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or Times News LLC.