Donald Trump’s war against Iran is taking place across an ocean, but it’s wreaking havoc on fuel and transportation costs in the United States. It’s hard to miss the gas prices posted prominently along roads across the country slowly ticking upwards, and Americans have no idea when to expect some relief. Neither does the president and his administration.
When Trump screws something up, the thing that will usually move him to try and unscrew it is a market downturn. In the case of the Iran war, the president is watching his campaign promise of affordability slip away, yet he seems either unwilling or unable to stop it. The Iran war cannot be ended with a Truth Social post, and any economic optimism from the White House does not change the material reality of fuel scarcity caused by a blockaded Strait of Hormuz. The result is a stew of baffling public contradictions from the president and his advisers about what’s going on with gas prices and when Americans should expect them to come down.
On Sunday, as gas prices hovered around $4 per gallon, Energy Secretary Chris Wright predicted to CNN’s Jake Tapper that gas prices may not return to under $3 a gallon until potentially “later this year,” or “not happen until next year.” Tapper pressed Wright on his past predictions, pointing out that early in the conflict the secretary had said he believed the price spike was “worst case” a “weeks”- and not a “months”-long problem.
“Prices have likely peaked, and they’ll start going down. Certainly, with a resolution to this conflict, you’ll see prices go down,” Wright added.
On Monday, the president got on the phone with The Hill and rebuked Wright, telling the publication that he thought his secretary was “wrong on that. Totally wrong,” and that prices would come down “as soon as [the war] ends.”
A fair enough disagreement, but then again the president said something completely different just days before, telling reporters outside the White House that “prices are not very high” at all at the moment, and that “the stock market is up. Everything is doing really well.” To make matters more confusing, a few days before that — when speaking to Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo — the president conceded that prices were high and might even be higher than they were now by the time the midterms rolled around.
They could be “the same” or maybe even “a little bit higher” by November, Trump said, adding that he “hoped” they came down by Election Day. Bartiromo could not contain the wide-eyed stare she shot at the camera.
The president, of course, ran on an affordability, anti-inflation agenda that was bold enough to include promises that Americans would be blessed with some of the lowest gas prices in history. The experience of his tenure has been quite different. But as Republicans gear up for the November midterms, it’s becoming undeniable that the fallout of the president’s war of choice and erratic trade policies are fomenting higher prices and a heap of voter disillusionment.
Faced with the prospect of penalization at the ballot box, Trump and some of his closest Cabinet allies are making perhaps the same mistake that (at least in part) cost former President Joe Biden his reelection bid: pretending everything is fine and that Americans themselves have a perception problem.
So claimed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent last week when asked why American optimism about the economy was not improving. “In their heart of hearts, they feel good. I’m not sure what they’re telling the survey people,” Bessent said of Trump’s increasingly abysmal polling numbers.
On Monday night, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News that individuals and members of the press who insisted the United States was “worse off” as a result of the war were “rooting against this president and therefore our country.”
On Tuesday, Leavitt touted that gas prices had fallen for the “eighth consecutive day,” omitting that the decrease was a little more than a tenth of a dollar — from a high of $4.118 down to $4.022. It comes out to about nine cents per gallon, barely a dent in the nearly 30 percent price spike since the war started.
Trump already exceeded the weekend timeline he proposed on Friday for an agreement that would end the war with Iran; Vice President J.D. Vance is slated to return to Pakistan after an unsuccessful first round of negotiations fell flat; and on Tuesday, the president told CNBC that he expects “to be bombing” again soon if negotiators can’t figure it out, insisting that he will not extend the ceasefire when it expires on Wednesday, unless Iran cedes to his demands..
There’s a lot of uncertainty, but when it comes to gasoline you’re probably better off paying attention to the posted price than the promises of the president.
