President Donald Trump has struggled with rising oil prices since the start of his second term, although he frequently claims that gas costs are actually down. Yet according to a recent report, Trump privately knows that the energy crisis is quite real — and instead of trying to find a solution, he is hoping for a miracle.
“The mood inside the White House is ‘frustration they can’t get this resolved,’ said Stephen Moore, a former Trump economic adviser,” reported Politico’s Scott Waldman and James Bikales on Monday. “He said the high energy prices are a ‘tax on the economy’ that is overcoming some positive fundamentals such as the rise of retirement savings and the growth of the stock market.”
He added, “‘The problem is there’s not too much they can do about it,’ he said. ‘It’s a global market, it’s a global oil supply.’ That’s causing ‘anxiety’ inside the White House, according to an outside energy adviser, granted anonymity to speak candidly. For one thing, there are few immediate mechanisms available to the administration to bring down prices.”
The reporters added, “‘They’re still looking for magic bullets,’ the former adviser said.”
Waldman and Bikales quoted Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in their various public statements attempting to assuage public anxiety over rising gas prices. They also cited Trump himself, who continues to deny Americans’ economic reality.
“He wrote on Truth Social that ‘Oil is flowing through the Hormuz Strait,'” Waldman and Bikales wrote. “He also wrote that “Iran wants to make a deal, quickly and badly,” which his administration was “open to.” He stated that Ukraine and Russia had agreed to stop striking energy infrastructure, because the “World’s Diesel price rise is mostly caused by the Russia/Ukraine War, not Iran.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy quickly noted that no such agreement had been made.
Despite Trump’s posts, oil prices hovered near four-month highs.
Speaking to AlterNet in April Dr. Robert Shapiro, a former top economic adviser to President Bill Clinton, claimed that it will take a long time for oil prices to return to the levels they were at before the Iran war.
He added, “Even if hostilities do not restart, the price of oil will not return to pre-Trump levels because there’s a new risk premium that they could restart at any time, increasing tanker insurance costs for example, and because oil infrastructure has been degraded, reducing supply for some time,. An Iran-controlled toll to use the Strait will produce big bucks for Iran, but its impact on world prices for oil, natural gas, helium, etc. should be minimal. Another source of economic friction will be the now-intense uncertainty about what the Trump administration will do next—in the Mideast and in scores of policies at home; and uncertainty dampens investment.”
Meanwhile Dr. Richard Wolff, an economist emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told AlterNet in March that the Trump administration’s claim the Iran War would ultimately lower gas prices was absurd.
Wolff continued, “Mr. Navarro’s analysis depends entirely on linking rising oil prices to geopolitical and military risks.”