It was less than a month ago when President Donald Trump delivered the longest State of the Union address in U.S. history, said “prices are plummeting downward,” and lauded his energy policies, in particular: “Nobody can believe when they see the kind of numbers, and especially energy, when they see energy going down to numbers like that, they cannot believe it. It's like another big tax cut.”
It was two months ago that I watched Trump in Detroit call affordability “a fake word” and rave about how he was lowering fuel prices: “When you see energy coming down like I brought it down, and gasoline coming down, that brings everything else down. It's so much bigger than any other factor.”
It was three months ago that I followed Vice President JD Vance to Allentown, Pa., where he declared: “I promise you there is no person more impatient to solve the affordability crisis than Donald J. Trump.”
On Sunday, oil prices hit their highest mark since July 2022, spiking more than 20 percent to $111 a barrel.
Trump followed the news with a social media post: “Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace. ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!”1
Republican figures — including those inside the White House — have wanted Trump to focus on domestic issues, and specifically economic issues, in the run up to November’s midterm elections. As my soon-to-be Reuters colleagues reported on Feb. 21:
White House advisers and Republican campaign officials want Trump focused on the economy, a point that was stressed as the top campaign issue at a private briefing this week with numerous cabinet secretaries, according to a person who attended. Trump was not present.
It’s especially crucial because voters increasingly do not trust Trump’s handling of the economy.
Nearly 7 in 10 Americans disagreed with Trump’s statement that “the U.S. economy is booming,” according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll from late February, and — significantly — before the U.S. and Israel launched strikes against Iran.
More than 80 percent of Americans disagreed with Trump’s statement that “there is hardly any inflation in the U.S.,” including 72 percent of Republicans.
Trump — and his Republican Party — are stuck in this predicament, one that gets trickier every time the president talks a big game about the economy, and then bombs another country.
My Reuters colleagues interviewed Trump by phone shortly after attack on Iran began, and specifically asked him about the potential for rising energy prices.
"I don't have any concern about it," he said, when asked about the higher prices at the pump. "They'll drop very rapidly when this is over, and if they rise, they rise, but this is far more important than having gasoline prices go up a little bit."
The Reuters reporting continues:
Despite Trump's public efforts to play down the price rises, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Energy Secretary Chris Wright have both engaged with oil CEOs to gauge possible options on combating rising energy prices, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Thursday.
Another White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was a scramble across the White House energy and national security teams to develop measures aimed at bringing down gas prices.
The official said Wiles had warned in White House meetings that failure to act on price rises would be "catastrophic" for Republicans in the elections.
Trump ran for a second term by asking voters to buy a product: Him and his economy. In buying that product, he promised immediate results. He said he would lower prices on "Day One."
Of course, that hasn’t happened, and voters increasingly hold him and his tariffs responsible for the excess inflation in the economy. And recently, the Supreme Court told the country that Trump didn’t have the authority to impose most of those tariffs, to begin with.
So what is the Trump administration to do? How does it tell people that it promised one economy — and delivered on certain campaign promises — but lacks the results to show for it? And how does Trump do that after he specifically conditioned the American voter to lack patience for that result?
We kind of know how this ends. The Biden administration tried to tell voters to be patient and to campaign on calls to “finish the job.” Biden was interrupted by geopolitical crises: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
Trump, instead, has interrupted his economic messaging with conflicts he largely began on his own.
How are you feeling about the economy these days, especially as the war with Iran continues? Email me at [email protected] and contact me securely on Signal at jacobbogage.87. And follow me on Bluesky: @jacobbogage.bsky.social.
1 After strikes on Iran in June — nine months ago — Trump told the nation that “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.”
