President Donald Trump offered up cold comfort to Americans concerned about oil prices surging above $110 a barrel for the first time in four years.
Responding to the news on Sunday in a Truth Social post, the 79-year-old wrote, “Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace.”
He ended his post with an insult for good measure, writing, “ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!”
Crude oil prices hit their highest point since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 on Sunday as major producers cut their output amid the ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which was closed in response to Trump’s war on Iran and threats from Iran to attack any ship that passes through. According to the New York Times, gas prices in the U.S. have jumped by 14 percent since Trump ordered the Iran attacks, reaching an average of $3.41 per gallon.
Kuwait announced cuts to its oil production on Saturday, citing “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” Kuwait has already been struck by retaliatory Iranian strikes that resulted in the deaths of six U.S. service members.
Also on Saturday, the United Arab Emirates said that it was “carefully managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements.” Meanwhile, CNBC reports that output in Iraq has “effectively collapsed.”
Homayoun Falakshahi, lead crude research analyst at Kpler, told CNN that oil could rise to as much as $150 a barrel by the end of March if ships continue to be unable to travel through the Strait of Hormuz.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Sunday that traffic through the strait, the only sea route for oil from the Persian Gulf, would resume after the U.S. had destroyed Iran’s ability to threaten tankers.
“We’re nowhere near normal traffic right now,” he told CNN. “That will take some time. But again, worst-case that’s a few weeks, that’s not months.”
He also dismissed concerns about rising oil prices as “fiction,” telling Fox News’ Shannon Bream, “It’s fiction. It’s right along the line. I’ve read about a dozen fiction pieces from Politico and other news things about stuff just totally made up, whole cloth.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom was quick to seize the opportunity to hit out at Trump for his actions, sharing a screenshot of a tweet Trump posted in 2013 that said, “Do you notice that oil prices just went up big time?” and adding, “We noticed.”
Trump has been criticized for having ulterior motives for many of his foreign interventions, including those in Venezuela, with critics suggesting that he is motivated by a desire to obtain more oil for the U.S.
In the month before U.S. forces abducted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January and transported him to the U.S. to stand trial for drug trafficking, the U.S. seized two oil tankers off the coast of Venezuela.
While the president did not provide a reason when asked about the first seizure, FBI Director Kash Patel said that the vessel had been used to transport sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran.
Shortly after Maduro’s abduction, Trump welcomed almost two dozen oil executives to the White House to discuss the future of Venezuela’s oil industry, following the announcement that the U.S. would seize the country’s oil reserves and put them under the control of American oil companies, with taxpayers potentially footing the bill for upgrade costs.
Speaking to The Daily Beast’s Joanna Coles in January, former Trump White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci said that Trump saw the opportunity for self-enrichment in Venezuela and took it.
“Somebody went to [Trump], because he’s a great conspiratorialist, and said, ‘OK, listen, you’ve got 46 billion or so barrels of known reserves. They’ve got 300-plus. You take them, Canada, U,S., and we’re roughly 50 percent of the known reserves,’” Scaramucci told Coles.
“So essentially we’re reducing our reliance on foreign actors and helping ourselves to Venezuela’s oil coffers?” Coles asked in response.
“It’s imperialism, is what it is, yeah,” Scaramucci responded. “That’s what he’s doing.”
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