US Politics
Trump throws his own Energy Secretary under the bus and says he’s ‘totally wrong’ about gas staying above $3
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Donald Trump rebuked one of his own Cabinet officials on Monday after his top energy chief told CNN that he wasn’t sure when higher gas prices would fall back down and stated that price hikes could potentially persist into 2027.
The president conducted one of his increasingly common early-morning phone interviews, this time from The Hill, on Monday and responded to an interview Energy Secretary Chris Wright gave on CNN’s State of the Union a day earlier.
Though most experts (including Wright) have warned that higher gas prices are the result of a supply shock to the oil market that likely won’t be fully steadied for months, the president instead insisted that prices would plunge once his administration signs a peace agreement to end the war in Iran.
Gas prices will drop “as soon as this ends,” Trump told The Hill. Wright, on Sunday, said that such a price drop “might not happen until next year.”
“No, I think he’s wrong on that. Totally wrong,” the president insisted to The Hill on Monday.
His latest pronouncement comes less than 24 hours before the U.S. and Iran are bound to reach the end of a two-week ceasefire brokered by administration officials amid what appears to be a effective stalemate in the struggle to open the Strait of Hormuz. The vital passageway off Iran’s coast is crucial to the global oil shipping trade, and has been effectively closed to tankers not flagged to Iran or its allies since the war began. Mines and small vessels continue to harass boats attempting to ford the narrow passage.
That closure has sent a massive supply shock through the global oil economy and prices initially surged past $100 per barrel, before backing off last week. Continued disputes over the strait, which Iran announced Sunday would be closed once again, could send those prices climbing once more. On Monday, oil prices jumped slightly on the news.
A statement purporting to be from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) forces was posted on Sunday by the government’s embassy in Hyderabad, India. The statement claimed that a closure of the strait would continue until the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports was lifted. News reports on Monday claimed that a top Pakistani official had suggested to the U.S. president to lift the blockade in order to spur peace talks, but Trump denied that the suggestion was made during his phone call with The Hill.
An American delegation led by Vice President JD Vance and deputies Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are due to arrive in Pakistan on Tuesday for the latest round of talks, though Iran’s government has signaled it will not participate. A return to open hostilities would likely cause prices to begin rising again as hopes for safe passage through the strait dim.
Trump’s latest claim about oil prices follows a line the administration has held to since the beginning of the conflict. White House officials have insisted that gas pump price hikes will only endure in the short term, and have even argued that Americans will accept temporary economic pain in order to achieve the administration’s foreign policy objectives. An NBC poll published on Sunday found that a wide majority of Americans feel that higher gas prices are eating into their financial livelihoods.
The White House has also pointed out that gas prices reached a high of $4 per gallon as recently as 2022, during the Biden administration, as a result of a post-Covid demand surge.