Trump’s 'humiliating failures' are even worse than you think: Nobel economist

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent with U.S. President Donald Trump in Ankara, Turkey, July 8, 2026. REUTERS/Umit Bektas

Although U.S. President Donald Trump promised a brief military operation against Iran, the war is dragging on after four and one-half months. Liberal economist Paul Krugman is warning that the longer the war lasts, the more it will cause prices for a variety of goods to soar. And in a mid-July column for his Substack page, Krugman argues that the ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict only makes things worse.

"The U.S. is, once again, bombing Iran while Iranian drones strike shipping," Krugman explains in his Substack column. "Iran, giddy with its success in defying America, is demanding sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, while Donald Trump is saying no, he owns the Strait and will collect 20 percent tolls. Folks, this is bad. U.S. national security policy is now entirely in the service of one man's vanity. We got into this mess because Trump thought he could win an easy victory that would let him strut around feeling powerful. Now, we can't get out because he won’t admit that his war has been a humiliating failure."

The former New York Times columnist continues, "The good news is that Trump's temper tantrum will probably do less economic damage than one might have expected — because the cease-fire that is apparently over wasn't doing as much good as one might have expected. The fact is that there is now a disconnect between events in the Strait of Hormuz and the energy prices that matter. This disconnect is coming from a surprising place, another war that was supposed to yield a quick, easy victory but didn't: Vladimir Putin's attempt to conquer Ukraine."

Oil prices, Krugman notes, "rose a lot" after "it became clear that Trump's vision of a splendid little war wasn't going to be fulfilled and that Iran retained the ability to choke off shipping through the Strait (of Hormuz)."

"Millions of barrels of oil a day literally bypassed the Strait via pipelines," according to Krugman. "Suppliers outside the Persian Gulf, including Venezuela, increased production. China sharply reduced its oil imports. And a significant part of world oil demand was met by drawing down inventories. There was, however, another factor: the effective price of oil to consumers — which is the price that matters for demand — rose a lot more than the crude oil prices one usually hears about. Even before the latest crisis that effective price remained far above pre-war levels. And these continuing high prices to consumers kept oil demand low and hence depressed the demand for crude."

Krugman warns that Americans can "expect the pain at the pump to continue and inflation to remain sticky."

"And, of course," the liberal economist laments, "the overarching moral of this story is the immense folly and criminality of a war that has left America and the world in a much worse place than they would have been if Trump and his enablers had just left things alone — or, better yet, had preserved the pretty good deal Iran and Barack Obama had agreed to in 2015."

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