The White House is using everything in its toolkit to try to bring down energy prices — but GOP campaign veterans say time is running out if the party is going to avoid a disaster at the ballot box in November.
The warning comes as President Donald Trump and his administration continue to send mixed messages on its war against Iran and the resultant spike in U.S. gasoline prices. Prices at the pump have risen by more than a third since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran and the oil prices that underlie the cost of gasoline remain exceptionally volatile and could jump again in the weeks ahead, just as drivers will hit the road for summer vacations.
“I would say gas prices need to come down substantially before Memorial Day weekend,” said Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist who is co-founder of public affairs firm ROKK Solutions. “That is a political catastrophe waiting to happen.”
The American public is souring on the war against Iran — largely because Iran retaliated by closing the Strait of Hormuz. Blocking that chokepoint for about 20 percent of the world’s global oil deliveries has set off a bout of unprecedented volatility in oil prices as Trump alternatively promises peace only to threaten more bombing.
The Memorial Day weekend is considered the start of the peak fuel demand summer driving season. That’s when many Americans hit the road for their annual vacations — and when they will be especially sensitive to the high cost of gasoline.
The Trump administration, meanwhile, seems to be arguing with itself on when prices will fall. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said over the weekend that gas prices may not fall below $3 a gallon until 2027 — a statement the president himself refuted on Monday.
“No, I think he’s wrong on that. Totally wrong,” Trump told The Hill.
Wright, too, walked back his prognostications in a Senate hearing Tuesday, saying “I don’t know the future of energy prices” and pointing out that pump prices are still lower than the peak they hit during the Biden administration.
U.S. oil prices were $93 a barrel Tuesday, almost $30 higher than when the shooting started but down from a recent high of $120. The average price of a gallon of regular gasoline has eased modestly in the past week to sit near $4.02 a gallon, but it still remains up more than a dollar from the end of February. Data from Brown University shows the war has already cost U.S. consumers more than $24 billion in higher fuel costs.
The White House said it has made clear that the price increases “are short-term, temporary disruptions.”
“President Trump is the unequivocal leader of the Republican Party and remains laser focused on keeping the American people safe, lowering costs for working families, and making our country greater than ever before,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in a statement. “The President brought oil and gas prices down to multi-year lows at record speed, and as traffic in the Strait of Hormuz normalizes, these energy prices will plummet once again.”
Zack Roday, a partner at Ascent and former House Energy and Commerce Committee communications director, noted that gasoline prices are one of the most visible economic indicators — and one that voters see on their commute to work each morning. A 2016 study found that a 10-cent increase at the pump has historically correlated to a 0.6 percentage point drop in presidential approval.
Roday said the Trump administration needs to acknowledge the pain of high gas prices for voters while reminding them that its policies managed to lower energy prices during its first term and during the first year of its second.
“Voters having that recollection — … obviously Republicans, but also, I think a lot of persuadable independent voters too — they understand that context,” Roday said. “This doesn’t minimize that prices are up because of the conflict … but there’s a track record of success there.”
Kiersten Pels, a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee, said in a statement that Trump has “already moved to unleash American energy and reverse the disastrous Biden-era policies that drove up gas prices to a record high of $5.”
“He was clear that short-term price fluctuations could follow decisive action during Operation Epic Fury,” Pels said. “Looking ahead to the midterms, costs are expected to ease as supply stabilizes.”
The GOP campaign consultants said they’re not panicking yet, but the first step for the Trump administration needs to be to get a handle on gas prices, and quickly — a tough ask when its counter-party in the negotiations, Iran, is maintaining effective control over the Strait of Hormuz.
“At a political level, if oil prices remain exorbitantly high, voters are going to blame the party in power, and there’s not much you can do from a comms perspective on that,” said Alex Conant, a partner at Washington-based strategic communications firm Firehouse Strategies and former communications director for Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Still, Conant noted that the war could end quickly and gas prices could fade from voters’ minds by the time they head to the polls.
“We’re still a long way away from the election, and you don’t know what gas prices are going to be six months from now, let alone six weeks from now,” Conant said.
The administration has so far pulled almost all of the same levers as past administrations — including the Biden administration — to try to tamp down on prices in the short term, with limited success.
Trump administration officials, like their Biden counterparts, have tried pushing oil companies to produce more crude, though Trump’s insistence that the war will be over soon has undercut the calls to unleash the drilling rigs.
Trump’s Department of Energy has also released oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, though the relatively small 10 million barrels that have gone out the door so far have had less impact on prices than the hundreds of millions of barrels the Biden administration released. Both administrations also warned gasoline station owners against price gouging amid wartime price volatility.
“History rhymes, but lately it’s been rhyming as fast as a rap song,” said Kevin Book, managing director at the energy research firm ClearView Energy Partners.
The current president has displayed one skill that Biden didn’t, Book added: Trump’s near-constant public pronouncements promising both war and peace may have confused oil traders enough to keep prices lower than they otherwise would be.
“The President’s ability to persuade the market is well ahead of his predecessor’s,” Book said. “Trump seems to be producing an uncertainty discount” in the oil market.
Ben Lefebvre contributed to this report.
