Gas prices, that unforgiving economic billboard on every American street corner, have turned against the White House. Two weeks after President Donald Trump touted falling costs at the pump in his State of the Union address, the national average climbed to $3.60 per gallon — up 23% in a month — and his approval rating on the economy hit a new low. For a presidency built on the promise of putting more money in people’s pockets, the glow from those red digits is politically scorching.
Few in Washington understand the power of that number like Ron Klain, President Joe Biden’s former chief of staff, who once rose before dawn to check gas price trackers. Four years on, the political barometer he watched is swinging against his successor. According to a new NPR/PBS poll, just 35% of respondents approve of the way Trump is handling the economy, with 58% disapproving and 7% unsure — the weakest economic rating of his term. Immigration numbers are sliding, too.
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A military gamble collides with the market
The immediate cause of the price spike is entwined with the administration’s marquee foreign policy move: Operation Epic Fury, the U.S. military campaign against Iran. The president has argued the higher cost is “temporary” and a small price to pay after the operation. But events at sea have complicated the sell. A resilient Iran has made the Strait of Hormuz — the critical chokepoint for global oil shipments — too dangerous to transit, rattling energy markets and amplifying the pain at American pumps.
Tom Wright, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former member of Biden’s national security team, told RTÉ News the operation has not unfolded as Trump hoped. “I think initially he hoped that it would be like Venezuela, that he would get rid of the supreme leader. But then do a deal with whoever was number two, three or four,” Wright said. The goal, he added, was not democratization but a bargain: curb the nuclear program and “maybe cut him in on the oil.” Instead, Wright said, “Mr Khamenei’s son is now the supreme leader and war has continued for 12 days,” expanding into the Strait and inflicting “serious damage on the Gulf.”
Domestic politics meet a global choke point
Rising gas prices are fracturing the Republican Party’s economic pitch months before November’s elections. Last year’s sweeping tax cuts, enacted by a Republican-controlled Congress, are getting eroded at the pump. Senate Majority Leader John Thune called the surge “something obviously we’ve got to pay attention to.” The political bind is particularly acute because the GOP largely backed the president’s Middle East ambitions; course correction now risks splitting party unity, while inaction risks bleeding support among price-sensitive voters.
For all the White House insistence that the cost spike is fleeting, markets and military timelines rarely move in sync. The longer the operation drags on, the more uncertain traders and households become — and the more enduring the price shock risks becoming. In pure political terms, those glowing numbers at gas stations are as potent as any campaign ad.
The attrition problem
The administration says Iranian military capabilities are being degraded. But battlefield arithmetic hasn’t translated into strategic leverage. Retired Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis cautions that Iran’s resilience could trigger a long, grinding confrontation. “We had enormous support or advantages over the North Vietnamese,” he said. “We just practically bombed them into the Stone Age and yet they never capitulated.” He drew a line from Vietnam to the U.S. war in Afghanistan, where superior firepower did not compel compliance over two decades. “On the ground, Iran remains viable,” Davis said, arguing that lists of targets destroyed and percentages degraded miss the central point: “The only thing that matters is can you compel compliance or can you not? And we are in the not category right now.”
That kind of stalemate is costly twice over — militarily and economically. Every extra week of uncertainty in Hormuz tightens the supply vise, filters through refineries, and shows up on receipts. And every extra dollar at the pump chips at the narrative that household finances are improving.
Moscow’s shadow over a market fix
Facing pressure, Trump officials are probing ways to cool prices. In an interview with Sky News, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the U.S. is easing sanctions on Russian oil, describing the steps as “narrowly tailored” and “short term.” The calculus is stark: more barrels, lower prices. But the optics are thorny. The Financial Times reports that Russia has been pocketing as much as $150 million a day in extra oil revenues amid the turbulence. Bessent downplayed the windfall, but the move underscores how few clean levers exist when a key transit lane is effectively closed.
Market volatility has influenced this White House before. Last year, sharp swings prompted the administration to soften parts of its tariff policy. With polls weakening on the economy and immigration, the throughline is clear: when markets wobble, political support follows. The question is whether the current bet — that easing some constraints on Russian crude will steady prices without significantly boosting Moscow — will hold.
What Republicans risk if the pump keeps pinching
The politics of gas prices are unforgiving because they are universal and inescapable. They reach rural and urban voters alike, and they refresh daily in giant font. If the war stretches and prices keep rising, Republican candidates will be pressed to choose: distance themselves from a policy they backed, or defend a pocketbook squeeze their voters can measure in real time. That pressure will intensify as campaigns crystallize their closing arguments for November.
For now, the administration maintains that relief is near and that Operation Epic Fury will end soon. But a strategy premised on a quick clean outcome is colliding with a reality messy at best: an adversary with leverage at sea, allies jittery over supply routes, and a home front where the cost of a gallon has become a referendum on competence. It’s no wonder political professionals used to set their alarms before dawn to refresh those gas price dashboards. The first number millions of Americans see each morning could be the one that decides who gets to keep governing them.
Somewhere in Washington, a senior official is likely watching those same real-time trackers that once pulled Ron Klain out of bed. The unresolved question is how much higher prices can rise before voter anger, market tension and internal party pressure force the administration to act more decisively — and at what cost.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
