Four dollars and climbing. That is what a gallon of gas cost the average American on Wednesday morning, the highest price ever recorded for mid-August, according to GasBuddy. Patrick De Haan, the head of petroleum analysis at the firm, put it plainly: gas prices have never gone above $4 per gallon after August 12 in any year. Not ever. The last time we came close was 2022, when the national average sat at $3.98. We are now past that, and there is no ceiling in sight.
And why? Because Donald Trump started a war with Iran and cannot figure out how to end it.
United States Department of Energy (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsThe president keeps telling anyone who will listen that the war is effectively over, that Iran’s military is destroyed, that the United States has “total control over the Strait of Hormuz.” On Truth Social Wednesday he declared, “I THINK WE WILL KEEP IT,” describing the U.S. Navy blockade as “A WALL OF STEEL” and insisting “there is nothing Iran can do about it.” Meanwhile, the strait through which roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil travels still appears to be under Iranian control. The blockade is real. The control is not. And every American filling up their tank this week is paying the difference.
This is what empire costs when the bill gets handed to working people. Trump promised fuel prices would “drop like a rock” once the war ended. The war did not end. The prices did not drop. The rock fell on us.
The administration’s own people are sounding alarms. Elliott Abrams, who served in Trump’s first term, told Politico that “the moment is extremely dangerous, and the Trump administration is showing uncertainty and incompetence.” An anonymous current U.S. official said Trump “fundamentally misunderstands” Iran’s leadership and has wrongly “felt like they can just keep applying pain and Iran will crumble, but the regime is not going to crumble.” These are not anti-war activists. These are the president’s own cohort, telling you the man at the helm does not know what he is doing.
Shealeah Craighead (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsIran and Oman are negotiating to reopen the strait. Tehran’s conditions are direct: end the blockade, lift sanctions, and pay war reparations. Trump’s counter was to demand Iran pay “for all the people that they have killed and gravely wounded with their roadside bombs and many conflicts.” So the diplomatic process is two sides demanding the other write a check while the chokepoint stays shut and your commute gets more expensive by the week.
When the pain at the pump threatened to become political liability, Trump drained the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. In March he authorized the release of 182 million barrels, bringing the SPR to its lowest level since 1983, according to the Department of Energy. That is not a strategy. That is a man burning down the firewood because he cannot put out the fire. The reserve exists for genuine national emergencies. Trump manufactured this one alongside Benjamin Netanyahu and then looted the emergency fund to hide the consequences from voters.
BrokenGearbox (CC BY 4.0) via Wikimedia CommonsLet us be clear about who is harmed here. Not the oil executives posting record margins. Not the defense contractors billing the Navy for blockade operations. The harm lands on the single mother driving 40 minutes to work. On the delivery driver whose gas budget just swallowed a quarter of their take-home. On rural communities where there is no transit alternative and no $4 gallon is optional. This is a tax on survival, levied by a president who lied about ending a war he chose to start.
The answer is not a cheaper blockade. The answer is ending the blockade, lifting the sanctions strangling civilian populations, and sitting down at the table with Iran and Oman in good faith. The community of nations is offering an off-ramp. Trump is too proud and too incompetent to take it. Every day he refuses, you pay for it at the pump, and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve sits emptier than it has been in four decades.
Call your representatives. Demand hearings. Demand an end to this blockade. The price of a gallon is not a market accident. It is a policy choice, and the people who made it have names.