LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Operations at Iraq's oil terminals are suspended, according to the government here. It follows attacks on two oil tankers in Iraqi territorial waters. Gas prices have spiked since the war began. The average cost of a gallon of regular unleaded gas in the U.S. is more than 60 cents higher than it was last month. President Trump has described this as a very small price to pay for safety and peace. NPR senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith reports.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: At a campaign rally in Kentucky yesterday, the signs behind Trump said bigger paychecks, lower prices. But when it comes to one key expense, Trump had to put a positive spin on a challenging situation.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: But oil prices are already coming back down. And it's going to come down, but we're not leaving until that job is finished.
KEITH: Overnight, oil prices surged and remain significantly higher than they were before the start of the war with Iran. Twenty percent of the world's oil comes through the Strait of Hormuz, and Iran is making it too dangerous for ships to travel. Dustin Meyer is with the American Petroleum Institute, a trade group.
DUSTIN MEYER: So whenever you see a disruption in the strait, especially one with the magnitude of what we have right now, you're going to see a price reaction. That's what we've seen over the last several days. And you can expect markets to continue to be volatile until there's clarity as to when the strait will reopen.
KEITH: At this point, clarity is hard to come by, though Trump has in recent days called the war a short-term excursion.
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TRUMP: This was an excursion that a lot of people wouldn't have done. I knew oil prices would go up if I did this, and they've gone up probably less than I thought they'd go up.
KEITH: It's a sharp turn from the way Trump talked about gas prices before the war.
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TRUMP: Many of them are 1.99 and 1.91. I saw we have them under $2 a gallon now.
KEITH: Bringing down gas prices was his answer last fall when pressed on voters' concerns about affordability.
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TRUMP: When you have energy and when you have gasoline less, everything else follows. It's such a big category. So when you have lower energy prices, which I think you admit we do, substantially, that means everything else. So we are the victors on affordability.
KEITH: Unfortunately, for the president and consumers, the inverse is also true.
STEPHEN MOORE: Those higher energy prices reverberate throughout the economy.
KEITH: Stephen Moore is a former economic adviser to President Trump.
MOORE: Part of the problem for President Trump is that we already had people complaining about prices.
KEITH: The Trump administration announced yesterday it would be tapping into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve - 172 million barrels over four months. It's a play President Biden tried after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Jared Bernstein was on the Council of Economic Advisers.
JARED BERNSTEIN: You're bringing me back to a very difficult and somewhat traumatic moment.
KEITH: Gas got to $5 a gallon. Consumers were mad. The president and everyone else wanted a fix. Bernstein says tapping the reserve brought prices down a little.
BERNSTEIN: But it certainly didn't change how they were feeling about that increase and how it really took a big dent off of their impression of the overall economy.
KEITH: Americans see the price of gas every few blocks. And when prices go up, people feel it. In 2012, reality TV star Donald Trump called into Greta Van Susteren's show on Fox News.
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GRETA VAN SUSTEREN: Gas prices going up between now and November or not?
TRUMP: They're going up tremendously. They've already gone up. If you look over the last four weeks, they've already gone up. And I think this could be a big factor in the election also. I really believe that the gas prices are going through the sky.
KEITH: Republicans have to hope gas prices aren't a big factor come this November.
Tamara Keith, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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