Trump's Making the Price of Gas Go Up

Remember how Republicans said that electing Barack Obama would jack up the price of gas to $10 a gallon? During her ill-fated presidential campaign Michele Bachmann promised that she would get the price of gas down to two dollars.

But that milestone occurred on Obama's watch, in 2015. Check out the picture on the right of Bachmann celebrating Obama's accomplishment.

Now, the president doesn't normally have a lot of direct control over gas prices. Administration policies can have long-term effects on oil prices, such as increased fuel efficiency standards on vehicles, which reduces demand and lowers prices. The Trump administration trashed Obama's fuel efficiency standards, by the way.

But generally the day-to-day ups and downs of the cost of a barrel of oil are controlled by the state of the economy and events in the news.

Since the election of 2016 the price of gas has gone steadily up (up to $2.81 from $2.35 a year ago). Now it's starting to spike: it's up to $70 a barrel. Why? Donald Trump's big fat mouth.

Benchmark prices for American crude oil cracked $70 a barrel on Monday, the first time they have climbed that high since 2014, as investors factored in the prospect of President Trump pulling the United States out of an international agreement that eased sanctions on Iran in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear program. 

There is no better deal to be had with Iran. Furthermore, the US pulling out of the agreement will send a message to North Korea that the United States cannot be counted on to stick to any agreement it signed.

All our allies, as well as Russia and China, are urging the United States to keep the Iran agreement intact.

Predicting what Trump will do is impossible, because his strategy is to lie and lie and then lie some more, then change direction multiple times, sowing chaos all the way. Then he waits to see what shakes out and changes course again.

And that's what I predict Trump will do. He will scream and whine and tweet and threaten to revoke the deal, and there'll be a flurry of activity with Mike Pompeo flying around the globe, and Trump will gyrate for a few weeks, and then announce that's he's come up with a hugely better deal which will be essentially the same as what we've got already.

Because Trump doesn't really care about Iran. He just wants to look tough. Putin and all the oil men want Trump to keep the essence of the Iran deal intact, so that's what Trump will do.

The same thing will happen with North Korea's nuclear program. Trump will pretend like he's made some huge breakthrough, and there'll be a "historic" meeting that lowers Trump to Kim Jong Un's level, and Kim will ostentatiously close a testing site (which he has to do anyway because it's no longer safe).

Kim may even pretend to get rid of some nukes. But he won't really do it, because Trump cannot be trusted to keep a promise: Kim would suffer an ignominious death like Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi.

At the end of the day nothing will really change: North Korea will keep their nukes and the Iran deal will remain intact.

But Trump will puff up his bloated face and pretend he's a stable genius, claiming victory when the status quo is completely unchanged.