Trump Scores Massive Victory for American People with UAE Exit from OPEC

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) abruptly quit the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) earlier this month, a major foreign policy victory for President Donald Trump, the American people, and global free markets.

After nearly six decades of membership, Abu Dhabi gave the oil cartel just three days’ notice. It reportedly didn’t consult with Saudi Arabia beforehand and simply announced in the cryptic language of a sovereign nation done explaining itself that the decision “is based on our national interest.”

The sudden exit of OPEC’s third-largest oil producer is a validation of President Trump’s strategic diplomacy dating back to his first term. He praised the UAE’s decision, telling reporters, “Ultimately it’s a good thing for getting the price of gas down, getting oil down, getting everything down.”

Trump previously accused OPEC of “ripping off the rest of the world.” He argued that many of its members receive U.S. military protection “for nothing” while they’re simultaneously “exploiting” American consumers. International policymakers have also long described the group as a cartel manipulating global oil prices for their own gain.

OPEC was founded in the 1960s to regulate oil prices by coordinating increases or decreases in production. Its member states, led by Saudi Arabia, control roughly 80 percent of global oil reserves and nearly 40 percent of all crude oil production. That significant influence has allowed them to dictate global oil prices to maximize profits.

But OPEC was never just an economic arrangement – it is a political entity as well.

The cartel began flexing its power almost immediately after its founding. OPEC imposed a unified embargo against the U.S. as retaliation for supporting Israel’s 1973 Yom Kippur War. This exposed American dependence on foreign oil, straining the economy and quadrupling gas prices.

After successfully coercing America once, OPEC never stopped.

For decades, the solidarity of OPEC member nations translated to real leverage over the United States. When OPEC restricted supply, American drivers felt it. When the cartel held the line on production, oil prices rose, inflation followed, and American presidents found themselves in the awkward position of hat-in-hand diplomacy with nations that have few incentives to cooperate with Washington.

The oil cartel’s real power was in its demonstrated ability to force American consumers and American policymakers to react to decisions made abroad.

So, why would the UAE break ranks now?

The answer begins with one of Trump’s most consequential foreign-policy achievements. During his first term, he pushed Arab states to move beyond the stale assumptions of the old Middle East to forge economic, diplomatic, and security relations with Israel. That effort produced the Abraham Accords in 2020, including full normalization of relations between Israel and the UAE – something many foreign policy experts previously thought impossible.

Although much of the media treated the agreement as a sideshow, it subtly changed the balance of power in the region. The UAE no longer had to see its future only through the lens of Saudi-led oil politics or OPEC discipline. It now had a serious economic and security partnership outside the cartel.

That new reality was tested during the Iran War. When Iranian attacks threatened UAE energy infrastructure, Abu Dhabi learned that the Saudis and the old OPEC order could not provide the security it needed, but Israel could. Israel responded to the call for help by sending Iron Dome batteries and personnel to the UAE to defend against the attacks, a remarkable first.

That strategic partnership was possible only because of Trump’s Abraham Accords.

Within a couple of months, the lesson was obvious for the UAE. Its future security would come less from the fiction of cartel solidarity and more from partnerships with Israel and the United States. This gave the UAE room to accelerate its plans to act on its longstanding frustrations with OPEC’s production quotas.

Over the years, Abu Dhabi’s innovations increased oil production capacity to roughly five million barrels per day. But under the cartel’s quota system, it was permitted to produce only around three million barrels per day. That enormous gap represents billions in foregone revenue, and a national energy investment held hostage to collective decisions outside the UAE’s control.

Staying inside OPEC meant watching those investments sit idle while the Saudis, increasingly at odds with the UAE on everything from OPEC leadership to geopolitics, effectively imposed a ceiling on the UAE’s prosperity. Instead of providing a vision for the future, OPEC had become a production quota straitjacket, and the UAE decided it was done wearing it.

The UAE energy minister was uncharacteristically candid in explaining the country’s sudden departure. “The decision to be outside any constraint,” he told reporters, “is something that is important for us to ensure that we are attaining market condition… we believe that the world is currently undersupplied.”

The global free market should see more oil production in the months and years ahead because of the UAE’s actions. And it is all made possible, in large part, by a Trump diplomatic strategy half a decade in the making.

The backdrop of the 2020 Abraham Accords makes clear the triggers of this OPEC crack-up. A country that has now staked its security on its relationship with Washington and Jerusalem has limited incentive to remain in an institution whose primary purpose is to constrain supply and keep oil prices elevated – the very outcome that Trump previously accused OPEC of engineering at America's expense.

Critics will point out that the immediate oil market impact may be modest. Shipping lanes through the Strait of Hormuz remain constrained, and Abu Dhabi cannot simply open the taps overnight. But fixating on the short-term barrel count is like watching a dam develop cracks and concluding that nothing has changed because the water is still mostly behind it.

Cartels do not collapse in a day; they erode one frustrated member at a time. The UAE’s departure plants a question in the mind of nearly every other OPEC member that produces below capacity and watches its quota frustrations compound year after year: why not us next? If even two or three of them arrive at the same conclusion Abu Dhabi just did, the cartel’s ability to pressure the United States will be finished.

The OPEC of 2026 now commands a far smaller share of global output than it did in 1973. American shale broke OPEC’s monopoly on the supply side, another accomplishment of the Trump administration. And now, thanks in part to the Abraham Accords, one of the Middle East’s savviest oil producers has decided that the future belongs to those who compete rather than collude.

W.J. Lee has served in the White House, NASA, on multiple campaigns, and in nearly all levels of government.