Donald Trump has suffered a fresh blow from his war on Iran just hours before an event aimed at repairing the damage the conflict has done to his party’s chances in the midterms.
The price of crude oil climbed past $100 a barrel on Wednesday as the 80-year-old president prepares for the GOP’s first-ever midterm convention, in Dallas. That’s 40 percent above pre-war levels, and the fourth time prices have gone that high since Trump launched the conflict on Feb. 28.
Voters have put both the war and cost-of-living concerns among their top anxieties ahead of the Nov. 3 polls, helping hand Democrats an almost 8-point lead in the race for control of the House and Senate.
Republicans want the president to trumpet the party’s legislative achievements at this week’s two-day conference. But they’re also worried he may use the event, billed by allies as a “Trump-a-palooza,” to justify the conflict or claim, again, that unaffordability is a Democratic Party “hoax.”
Wednesday’s spike in crude oil costs comes after Iranian proxies in Yemen further tightened restrictions on shipping traffic in the region and launched a series of attacks against Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally. Those strikes show how far negotiations to end hostilities in the region have now broken down.
Trump’s campaign against the Islamist regime, which he said would last a “few weeks,” has meanwhile entered its seventh month. He has also variously said that it was “already over” and that it might “last forever.”
Iran has responded to the president’s military attacks by closing the Strait of Hormuz, a shipping corridor in the Persian Gulf through which about a fifth of global oil supply passes. Gas prices have spiked in the U.S. as a direct result, peaking at $4.60 per gallon in May and remaining at $4.15 as of Wednesday.
Those increases have had a knock-on effect on inflation, with the higher cost of oil driving up the price of everything that requires fuel to grow, manufacture, or move. Trump’s promise to reduce inflation, along with no more messy foreign military entanglements, formed a key element of the campaign that won him a second term in 2024.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment on this story.
