Donald Trump once asked voters to judge his opponents by the sticker price at the gas pump. Now, he’s dismissing anger about those same prices under his watch even as the cost of living emerges as a top issue ahead of the midterms.
Six months into the war with Iran, economic sentiment has shifted sharply against Republicans, including on that key metric, which voters previously pointed to as a singular area of relief before the war began.
Labor Day, a symbolic campaign marker for when most voters tune into the upcoming fall elections, is just two weeks away, and the party’s options to turn around voters’ assessment of their handling of the economy are shrinking.
As Trump’s advisers and aides begin acknowledging frustrations with the cost of living, their top economic messenger– the president himself– continues to downplay them.
“For you to pay a tiny little bit more for your gasoline, just remember you’re doing it so that a very evil country cannot have a [nuclear weapon],” Trump said earlier this month at a rally on Long Island. “So, remember that when you have to pay a little bit more, you’re at $4. It’s ok. I’ll never apologize, I did the right thing.”
“Affordability is a genuine issue, and Trump should be responding to it,” said Jason Sorens, a libertarian economist at the American Institute for Economic Research. “I don’t think it would make sense for him to continue minimizing the affordability problem, and I think he has space to try to address it through reducing tariffs and trying to resolve the war.”
Trump has said gas prices will “drop like a rock” as soon as hostilities end in the Middle East, but ceasefire agreements between the U.S. and Iran have repeatedly crumbled. Instability in the Strait of Hormuz stands to have lasting impacts on the oil market, according to analysts, months into a conflict that Americans were originally told would only last a few weeks.
The average cost for a gallon of fuel is around $4.10 nationally, where the median price has settled for about a month now, according to AAA estimates as of Monday. Anger with energy prices extends beyond gas stations: voters are also vexed at the cost of everything from electricity to air conditioning.
Mark Wolfe, who has worked in utility assistance for more than two decades, says that energy is “becoming a target for people’s frustrations, and it’s staying; it’s sticking.”
In his conversations with legislators and everyday Americans, he says he has never heard people, regardless of their income, express such ire toward energy companies. “Everyone’s got one of these bills, and they see it,” Wolfe said. “They want to know someone is fighting for them.”
Oil and gas companies have seen their profits surge in the wake of the war. Democrats in the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee determined that Trump’s stock holdings of oil and gas companies contributed more than $15 million to his bottom line of $2 billion in income last year. In response to a request for comment, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said that the president’s stock portfolio is independently managed by a third-party financial institution using computer-based investment strategies.
“Neither President Trump nor any member of his family has any ability to direct, influence, or provide input regarding how the portfolio is invested or when investments are bought or sold,” Ingle added.
The president has put public pressure on retailers like Exxon and Chevrolet to lower prices for consumers, but he has rarely acknowledged that voters are struggling financially. In southwestern Ohio, Vice President JD Vance took a different approach on Friday, telling a local reporter that the administration is working a “great deal” on addressing higher prices.
“The good news is gas prices got much higher than they are today,” said Vance, referencing the fact that prices were as high as $4.55 this summer. “It’s something the Iranians have explicitly made part of their strategy in this particular conflict, so we’re working on it very hard to try to get that relief.”
The president tapped into resentment about inflation in the 2024 election when he faced former President Joe Biden and later Vice President Kamala Harris. Under Biden’s administration, gas prices at their highest were $5 in 2022. Trump vowed to return them to under $2 if he won.
“Thanks to Kamala’s war on American energy, electricity prices are up 32 percent. Gasoline prices are up 50 percent and going higher,” Trump said in August 2024. “We hit $1.87” during Trump 1.0, he continued, “Harris and Biden blew it all up. If Kamala wins the election, the worst is yet to come.”
By the time Biden and Harris left office, gas prices had dropped to $3.10 and continued to fall until President Trump launched the Iran war on Feb. 28 in concert with Israel.
Republican lawmakers in Congress who were similarly outspoken about the cost of gas under the previous administration justified current prices as “a small price to pay” for the military campaign against Iran, echoing rhetoric used by Trump.
The majority of Americans, 70%, disapprove of Trump’s stewardship of the economy and inflation, according to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll published earlier this month. Democrats held a slight edge over Republicans for which party voters’ trusted more to handle the cost of living, a reverse of historic trends.
Trump told rallygoers in South Carolina on Friday that “as soon as” the U.S. stops Iran from securing a nuclear weapon, “oil is going to be down at lower than it was even just a little while ago.” It’s not clear what benchmark figure he was referring to.
Last week, the president also dismissed fighting in the Strait of Hormuz, where a fifth of the world’s oil supply passed through prior to fighting in the waterway. Speaking alongside crypto leaders in the White House, Trump said the strait is “not going to be quite as important as it was in the past.”
The Trump administration has emphasized energy independence, but domestic oil prices are set based on the global market– making it impossible to fully detach from the constraints on oil supply worldwide.
The White House has taken emergency measures to blunt the impact of the war on domestic oil prices, including tapping some 172 million barrels from the nation’s strategic reserves. Officials also suspended the Jones Act to permit foreign-flagged vessels to deliver goods to American ports, and waived U.S. sanctions on Russian oil.
“President Trump and his entire energy team have taken decisive actions to mitigate disruptions to the energy markets and remain firmly committed to unleashing American energy dominance and cutting costs,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in a statement.
Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, said attacks on oil refiners in Russia as a result of the war in Ukraine is also putting pressure on the oil market. As for an alternative route to the Strait of Hormuz which Trump aspires to achieve, it would likely “take years to fully address,” he says.
Even if another ceasefire materializes, “all Iran would need to do to drive the uncertainty again” is “launch a couple of attacks here and there to keep up the risk element,” said De Haan. “There’s no real way to plan for what tomorrow will bring.”
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