In President Donald Trump’s telling, the United States has fuel enough to hover above the chaos that his attack on Iran has triggered in global energy markets.
“We’re in great shape for the future,” Trump said in a speech last week, asserting that this nation, as the world’s biggest oil and gas producer, doesn’t rely on the tankers Iran blocked from passage through the Strait of Hormuz for the past month. “We don’t need anything they have.”
But the view is much different beneath the service station signs across the country that have flipped to more than $4 per gallon for the first time in four years. Over the past month, US households paid $8.4 billion more for gasoline compared to prices before the war on Iran began, according to a report by Democrats on Congress’ Joint Economic Committee.
