The Trump administration is quietly changing its narrative around gas prices as officials realize President Donald Trump's promises are unworkable, Politico reported on Wednesday.
"Administration officials facing lawmakers declined to put a timetable when the war in Iran would end and the ensuing rise in energy prices would ease, instead offering vague assurances of their track record in lowering prices," said the report. "'I think the conflict will end, and I think gasoline prices will come back to where they were, or perhaps lower,' Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Senate appropriators."
This assessment, the report continued, is "a marked shift in rhetoric from previous public appeals asking for reassurance on energy price spikes two months after Trump launched the strikes in the Middle East and Iran retaliated by attacking oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, choking off nearly 20 percent of the world’s oil supply and straining the global economy. Trump himself originally said the war, now nearing its second month, would last 'four to five weeks.'"
There is no current path for reopening the Strait of Hormuz to full capacity, even as the Trump administration claims that Iran's naval fleet has been decimated.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright, for his part, has suggested average gas prices could stay above $3 a gallon into next year, which Trump has publicly contradicted. However, Wright is now softening this stance, saying, “I never said gas prices wouldn’t go down until next year. Never, never said such a thing. There was a thing on the news that I said they might not be below $3 a gallon ... I left some uncertainty in there.”
Average gas prices are above $4 a gallon as of press time, driven in large part by significant increases in GOP-controlled states where gas is usually cheap. The most recent polls have Trump's approval rating cratering to the mid to low 30s, with even one in three Republicans disapproving.