If you're not returning to coal, and you're anticipating further hostilities with Russia, then you're buying liquid natural gas from the US at much higher price

If you're not returning to coal, and you're anticipating further hostilities with Russia, then you're buying liquid natural gas from the US at much higher prices than are paid by both US and Chinese industry + domestic consumers. Germany returning to coal would be a bitter pill to swallow, but insisting that Germany will remain competitive despite much higher energy costs which only get worse with scale by saying "it's not that bad" is not convincing. Free speech, free press, and free assembly is under another round of attacks many places, including Germany, The United States, Russia, Israel, and Turkey, among others. Some are relatively better than others and some had very little left to fall, but all are in absolute decline. As I'm in favor of free speech as a universal value and not an apologist for anyone's domestic authoritarianism, I don't consider the hypocrisy of the speaker to be a good justification to sweep aside mutually unflattering facts about state policy.