Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s admission yesterday that it “could be next year” before gas prices return to below $3 a gallon is causing trauma in Republican circles because “next year” is after the November 3 midterm elections.
Initially Trump said he could end the war “in two or three days.” It then became “four to five weeks.” He then stretched it to six. His so-called “cease-fire” ends Wednesday.
We’re now in the eighth week of what Trump called his “little excursion” into Iran (he hasn’t called it a “war” because under the Constitution he needs Congress’s okay to go to war), with no end in sight, and oil prices are again on the rise.
Over the weekend — only hours after Trump said the Strait of Hormuz had been “reopened” — Iran said it had closed the strait.
Yesterday, Trump claimed that his blockade would quickly bring Iran to its knees:
“Iran recently announced that they were closing the Strait, which is strange, because our BLOCKADE has already closed it. They’re helping us without knowing, and they are the ones that lose with the closed passage, $500 Million Dollars a day! The United States loses nothing. … We’re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it because, if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran. NO MORE MR. NICE GUY! They’ll come down fast, they’ll come down easy and, if they don’t take the DEAL, it will be my Honor to do what has to be done, which should have been done to Iran, by other Presidents, for the last 47 years. IT’S TIME FOR THE IRAN KILLING MACHINE TO END! President DONALD J. TRUMP.”
But Trump’s blockade isn’t working as Trump intended.
Last night, the U.S. Navy opened fire on an Iranian-flagged cargo ship to disable its engines after it apparently refused to stop despite repeated warnings.
Following the incident, oil prices soared higher, and experts predict it will make ships even less likely to brave the strait.
Last week’s Quinnipiac poll shows that almost two-thirds of Americans (65 percent) blame Trump for the spike in gas prices, including 73 percent of independent voters.
This is important. The economic costs of this war to average Americans are understood by average Americans to be the direct result of Trump’s personal decision. Trump went into this war without consulting anyone or getting anyone else on board — not Congress, not America’s allies, not NATO or the United Nations — and didn’t even explain to America why he was taking the nation into war. So, it is indubitably his own war.
If Trump believes he’s holding all the cards, he has no idea whom he’s dealing with.
The new regime in Iran believes it has more leverage than Trump because (1) it’s able to stop traffic in the strait as easily as can the U.S., and (2) it’s better able than Trump and the U.S. to wage a long war of attrition. It knows Trump is under increasing political pressure in the U.S. to bring down gas prices and is facing midterm elections in less than seven months — but all it needs to do in the meantime is survive.
The Iranian regime has also likely concluded that it hasn’t yet inflicted sufficient pain on Trump (and American consumers) to prevent America from attacking it again, so it will hold out for ironclad guarantees from the United States that the U.S. won’t resume bombing — guarantees Trump not only refuses to grant, but continues to threaten Iran every time he opens his mouth or posts another screed.
This is a war without end.
Meanwhile, today marks the opening of the government’s new tariff refund portal, through which businesses can claim reimbursements for the import taxes — that is, tariffs — they’ve paid, which were struck down by the Supreme Court.
The government — that is, we taxpayers who fund the government — owes tens of thousands of importers a total of up to $175 billion in refunds for the tariffs imposed by Trump last year under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
But the people who have actually borne much of the cost of these import taxes — American consumers — won’t see a penny of refund. The $175 billion will just contribute to the record profits of American corporations.
If corporations worried that competitors might pass these refunds on to their consumers in the form of lower prices, presumably all corporations would do the same. But corporate power is so concentrated now — monopolies and oligopolies now dominate most industries — that corporations have no such worry.
So you and I and other taxpayers are in effect refunding American corporations for the import taxes they paid, although we paid for most of them in the form of higher prices — which they won’t now lower because they have monopoly power to keep them high.
Which means — like Trump’s war and its effect on oil prices — Trump’s tariffs will continue to require us to pay more.
Put the two together, and you see why American consumers are f------.
Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
