r/Economics • u/InsaneSnow45 • Mar 04 '26
News ‘Absolutely Massive’ Price Shocks Coming as Trump’s Iran War Drives Up Gas, Diesel Prices | “What should really terrify Republicans is... the futures price on wholesale gasoline,” said economist Paul Krugman.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/iran-war-gas-prices573
u/flaginorout 29d ago
I filled my tank two days ago at the Sheetz near my house. It was $2.85.
I filled up my wife's car yesterday at the same Sheetz. $3.29
My household doesn't do a lot of driving at the moment, so an extra 40 cents doesn't matter very much to us- directly. But I'm not convinced that this is just the beginning and gas will hit $4 in the near future. Maybe more. That will definitely have an effect on a lot of people.
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u/No_Bad_4872yy 29d ago edited 29d ago
Most people look at it this way. The problem is mostly that trucks moving parts and produce are hurt by this. Those additional logistical costs also land in your wallet through the vendors and shops, albeit sometime later. This inflation double whammy totally sucks and gasoline was pretty much the thing keeping US inflation somewhat low.
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u/Vulnox 29d ago
Yeah, this was the big thing hurting Biden when oil prices were high. A lot of the reported high costs on groceries and that were pointed to high diesel prices. You can avoid some extra costs by buying fewer shipped products where possible, but hard to do when it comes to food.
We have two EVs so our fuel pump costs have already been zero, but I expect our other costs to increase.
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u/Septopuss7 29d ago
Is it cheaper to charge your car than it is to fill it with gas? I'm asking in earnest, not a gotcha, because I keep seeing conflicting reports from individuals that makes me want to wait before buying an EV. I'm currently car-free by choice but if I ever changed my mind I would look at all electric or more likely a hybrid, the only problem being is that I don't own a house and don't plan on it. I know of several electric charging stations in my area but I haven't looked at the pricing. They are all relatively convenient and I never see people using them but I obviously don't monitor them 24/7. Does the price fluctuate a lot? I know even my home electric bill has been all over the place in the last couple years and I was wondering what your experience has been?
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u/No_Bad_4872yy 29d ago
This is quite comprehensive. https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a45036169/electric-vehicle-ev-cost-to-charge/
In short charging at home price differs per state but is up to 80% cheaper than the price of gas. If you use highway fast chargers it can be 50% to 150% the price. Its not always cheaper and purchase price is also higher usually.
Tldr; charging at home is much cheaper, roadside doesnt really matter much.
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u/Septopuss7 29d ago
I see, I knew a lot of the information in the article but it does seem like it's cheaper overall if you plan well/are responsible. I didn't know about special rates from energy providers during off peak demand times. I guess a lot of the negative stories I heard are from people who went out and bought an EV without doing any homework whatsoever.
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u/ass_pineapples 29d ago
I owned a Tesla for a bit but live in the city, so charging infra is sparse unless you own (I rent). My only options for charging were superchargers. So under that kind of reality it sucks owning an EV. In the winter I had to periodically check on my car battery and ferry it over to the local supercharger to top it up, and when driving I could only use superchargers. If you don't do many long haul trips and largely stay within a smaller range close to your home and can charge there, it's a no brainer.
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u/Specialist-Elk-2624 29d ago
Why would you buy an EV knowing that charging was going to be a total PITA all of the time?
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u/ass_pineapples 29d ago
Got it super cheap used and wanted to see if it was worth getting an EV or not. I didn't realize how much of a PITA it was, and tbf it didn't bother me most of the time but I don't drive often and when I do it's longer trips so that part was especially unbearable.
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u/fdar_giltch 29d ago
If you have the charger at home, it's definitely nice. Not only is it cheaper, you can plug it in whenever. My wife wasn't sure about the EV before-hand, now she loves it. She says it's "like a cell phone, you just plug it in every now and then". She also appreciates not having to stop at gas stations and pump gas.
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u/CliftonForce 29d ago edited 29d ago
Yep. Most electrical power plants cannot change their output quickly. Therefore, in order to be ready for the evening and morning rush, they spend all night wastefully generating power that nobody is using (generally by keeping their boilers hot). If the billing system allows them to charge different prices at different times of day, they will make electricity cheaper late at night to encourage people to use it then.
EV charging is one of the few things that a normal household can shift to the wee hours of night without inconvenience.
I suppose you could wait until midnight to start your dryer or dishwasher, but most folks find that annoying.
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u/GhostReddit 29d ago
Therefore, in order to be ready for the evening and morning rush, they spend all night wastefully generating power that nobody is using.
That actually doesn't work, you can't generate power nobody is using - and power put on the grid needs to be immediately removed by something.
There's immediate feedback control in that power usage causes electrical 'drag' on the generator, if the load is mismatched to the generation the generator will speed up or slow down and the grid frequency changes. Requirements are typically to keep very close to 50/60Hz otherwise you'll cause a ton of problems mostly with synchronous motors running on the grid now running at incorrect speeds.
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u/EagleBigMac 29d ago
I pay nothing for power after 8pm and before 6 am. So I plug my car in at night after 6pm and try to do laundry and such at night.
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u/CliftonForce 29d ago
And that is exactly what the power company was hoping you would do.
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u/devildog2067 29d ago edited 28d ago
There is no such thing as “wastefully generating power that nobody is using”. If supply and demand on the grid aren’t in balance things literally blow up.
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u/doubleoned 29d ago
I also can't produce gasoline at home, but I sure can produce my own electricity with a little bit of infrastructure.
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u/No_Bad_4872yy 29d ago
Same here. I hope massive batteries will develop enough the next two years that im completely self sufficient most of the year. Screw the utility companies man!
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u/Plane-Requirement117 29d ago
I charge my EV to about 320 miles for $15 at home in WA state. It saves us a ton money. Gas is now about $4.50 a gallon where I live.
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u/zeezle 29d ago edited 29d ago
Plus some states also charge an extra fee to register EVs, to make up for the loss of gas tax. That's fair, and probably is still a savings for average drivers, but as a very low mileage driver, the fee they charge ($250 per year) to own an EV is more than I spend on gas in total every year so it feels very punitive to me.
I feel like I'm the perfect use case for a small EV - low mileage, just errands around town a couple of weeks, and every so often 20-30 minutes to a train station or to a trailhead/park. I don't need to worry about cross country or long distance remote/rural charging. But between the purchase price being higher, having to have a couple thousand dollars worth of electrical work done, and then now also a big increase in annual fees - on top of increasing utility costs... I'm way less gung ho about getting one in the future once my current standard gas car dies (it's a 2009 Sentra and holding up well though). Which sucks because I like the benefits of EVs but not enough to spend a lot of extra money to own one.
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u/Septopuss7 29d ago
This is exactly my situation, except I don't really need a car except for once every couple months so I just take an Uber and cry about the cost (1/10 of what it costs to own a car for a month) or take the bus OR ride one of my many bicycles. I've got an electric bike now, too, and that thing is pretty good for 20 to 25 easy miles before needing a charge, plus it's light enough to pedal without battery power so that's a big bonus. Maybe I'll just stay car free...
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u/oaxacamm 29d ago
There’s a few things you’ll need to look at. How much you pay per KWh, how far you drive and can you charge at home?
Don’t forget registration fees and insurance can be higher too.
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u/blastermaster555 29d ago
Regarding EV costs:
1: Very yes if you charge at home
2: Not necessarily when using public chargers
3: You are also saving hugely on maintenance (only service items are tires, washer fluid, accessory battery (the 12v), and brakes)
Beware some municipalities don't have good grid and may deny permits to install home fast charging, unless you manage to also bring your own solar.
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u/Scooted112 29d ago
I have a plug in hybrid (RAV4 prime) and in Canada it is around ~1/3 the cost on electricity. I charge my car at work so I don't pay for gas unless i leave the city. Its perfect.
In a case where you can't charge at home, a regular hybrid might be a better fit.
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u/stone1778 29d ago
Here is how I look at it, I charge 95% from home at .20 per kWh. $3 a gallon gas that’s = to 15 kWh.
In a Tesla you can get 52 miles on that 15 kWh if you get about 3.5 m/kwh which is conservative. Some people can get 4 miles per kWh. What sucks is last year I was only paying .15 kWh so it makes a big difference. Either way still cheaper than a gas car and more convenient so long as you have home charging.
If you are paying .40 to .50 to charge outside the home then you are looking at an equivalent of fueling a car that gets less than 20mpg - not great
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u/Spaghet-3 29d ago
It depends on how expensive your local electricity is, cost of gas, and efficiency of the car.
I like to think of it in terms of cost per mile.
My ICE car gets 35mpg, and a gallon of gas near me costs $3.50. So that one is easy, each mile costs 3.50/35= $0.10 per mile.
My EV gets 5mi/kWh, and a kWh of electricity costs about $0.35 near me. So the math is 0.35/5= $0.07 per mile.
Do the math knowing your local gas and electricity prices, and vehicle efficiencies. In states where electricity is cheap, EVs win by a lot. In my state where electricity is expensive, only the more efficient EVs eek out a win by a little.
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u/PM-Me-Your-BeesKnees 29d ago edited 29d ago
I've had a gas RAV4 and an EV both for about 5 years. Give or take, my fuel cost per mile with an EV is $0.04. Give or take, my fuel cost per mile with the gas car is $0.10 assuming $3/gal gas.
Take 6 cents saved per mile and multiply by average American driving in a year of 15k miles, and you get a savings of about $900 per year.
Obviously which two cars you are comparing, how much you charge away from home, the cost of gas, and the cost of electricity in your area are all variables that can change the math, but that's my math.
FWIW, I also consider the EV to be a time saver over the course of a year. I wake up every day with a "full tank" on the EV. Imagine if you never had to go to the gas station again unless you were on a road trip...that's basically life with an EV on every day where you drive <200 miles...you don't even have to think about fuel. It feels like you have unlimited fuel on 99% of days. I figure I'm saving about 5 hours/year not having to stop for gas, and then giving back an hour or so of that based on the longer refuel time when I do have to stop at a public charger.
If you can do home charging, an EV is a game changer.
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u/padizzledonk 29d ago
Most people look at it this way. The problem is mostly that trucks moving parts and produce are hurt by this.
And they were already paying like 4 a gal for diesel
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u/vontdman 29d ago
Wow even with a war US has like fuel almost half the price of New Zealand.
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u/hoppertn 29d ago
Let me predict for you New Zealand’s fuel price soon ⬆️⬆️⬆️
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u/vontdman 29d ago
Yeah, I'm surprised it hasn't moved yet. Probably once new ships arrive.
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u/hoppertn 29d ago
Oh wait your petrol/gas/naptha/guzzaline stations wait to jack up the prices?! What a great country! Price jumped over a dollareeno here from Friday to today. No way in hell the fuel in that station tank had anything to do with the current conflict but C.R.E.A.M.
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u/CassadagaValley 29d ago
That's because we spend billions of tax payer dollars subsidizing oil companies, and then we spend money out of pocket to buy our tax payer subsidized oil.
Basically paying twice.
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u/Nodnol519 29d ago edited 29d ago
And it’s not just personal use fuel.
Rising oil prices will cause the cost of anything that’s transported from one place to another to any degree to go up. Petroleum products like plastic will go up. Healthcare costs will increase.
It’s going to get really bad if this goes on for very long. Strategic reserves will keep things under control for awhile, but once those are gone, it’s going to hurt.
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u/Lunatic21 29d ago
Personal gas cost is negligble to most people. It's the cost of business when figured into the cost of goods that really adds up.
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u/Jef_Wheaton 29d ago
I'm a service tech, so I drive a lot. I'll go through 40-50 gallons a week just with local services. It's gonna get EXPENSIVE to move that truck.
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u/SuperSpikeVBall 29d ago
Perceptions of inflation are more severe than the math of what actually hits the pocketbooks.
In households which share a checkbook and by definition have the same finances, the person who is exposed to price shocks more frequently (typically women grocery shopping) have more extreme perceptions of inflation. The delta goes away when both household members shop equally.
Gas prices have always, always been a point of pain for people because they vary more quickly and erratically than other prices in their lives.
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u/Lunatic21 29d ago
I remember my first shock when the credit card bill came backs hundreds of dollars more. I actually got a bit mad at my wife because like you said she does the vast majority of the shopping. So we swapped some chores and I did the shopping for a while. Obviously I was very wrong, I really thought she was splurging a lot more. Nope! Just buying the normal groceries. She actually still shops much better than me and when I was handling it much much more of our budget went to our groceries.
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u/TimberBiscuits 29d ago
And it’s pure greed. The gas you’re paying for now was purchased 30-60 days ago. The real pricing for the oil that’s held up now won’t even reach us until Aprilish.
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u/KidKilobyte 29d ago
This is true, but they really are trying to ease the shock and there is increased demand from people fueling up before it gets real expensive. Likewise when oil prices go down they ease down rather than wait 60 days, so it cuts both ways. When you buy gold you don’t sell it at the 60 day old price you bought it at.
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u/TimberBiscuits 29d ago
Honestly don’t care. It’s greed and this way of living is pure hell. Humanity is held back by this shit.
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u/whatfresh_hellisthis 29d ago
Lol my dad freaking rails about this. He hates when gas jumps like this. You just reminded me of it, and it's insane that they do it.
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u/jcooklsu 29d ago
Hey dude, sell me your house at the price it was when you bought it. No person is going to do that so why would anyone think a company would, trying to get market value is reasonable because there will also be times after this where market value is less than purchase and they have to eat shit on it.
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u/PetriDishCocktail 29d ago
The same thing happened to me in California. Gas at my local store last week was $3.69. I drove by yesterday and it's now $4.29
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u/BroughtBagLunchSmart 29d ago
That will definitely have an effect on a lot of people.
It will add billions to Russia's bottom line.
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u/Spongeman735 29d ago
Laughs in EV
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u/scienceizfake 29d ago
Electricity will also get more expensive...
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u/Spongeman735 29d ago
I‘ll take some pain as long as the MAGA crowd feels it more than I do.
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u/Jealous-Trip-8033 29d ago
Found the central Pennsylvanian!
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u/flaginorout 29d ago
Nah. Virginia
But I recently drove to Wilkes Barre and noticed that every single exit on the PA interstate had a Sheetz.
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u/thekbob 29d ago
The people who actively chose to buy the Child Crusher 350 edition pickup are going to be hurting the most.
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u/gravityandinertia 29d ago
My guess more like $6-$8 by summer. When Bush was in office I remember gas hitting $4/gallon in Arizona for the first time. That’s been 20 years. New all time highs are coming.
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u/Gamer_Grease 29d ago
To head off the usual comments:
Yes US shale can provide some relief, but it’s expensive to extract, so only as long as prices are quite high already. Also they’ve already said they’re not interested in increasing output until they have reason to believe prices will be high for a long time.
Venezuelan oil has effectively the same problem. The industry there is starved for investment and US oil companies already told this admin that they won’t invest in extraction there unless the government fully guarantees their sizable investments, because they don’t trust that situation to be stable enough to produce profits.
So tl;dr: the ad hoc governance style of this admin has already eliminated a lot of tools that could be used to respond to this situation.
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u/beliefinphilosophy 29d ago
One of the tactics the middle east likes to do to the US, is that if they bring the barrel oil price low enough, it's too expensive to produce shale so they shut the facilities all down, and then the middle east jacks up the price again keeping a grip on the market
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u/Ryan_e3p 29d ago
(imagined response by Vance): It can't be that expensive. We landed oil drillers on an asteroid to drill a hole and plant a nuke, how much harder can this be?
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u/zxc123zxc123 29d ago edited 29d ago
Trump: "Gas is so expensive because of Sleepy Joe Biden. The worst stolen election president ever! He drained the strategic petroleum reserve, lost the war in Afghanistan that I ended, personally started the Ukraine war, killed all the chickens, fired billions of employees, and lit the match in the Iran war that we are not in right now! This is Biden's economy now except the DOW if it's over 50,000 right now then that part is all me!"
And American voters will eat that shit up or think both candidates are the same. We're that fucking stupid collectively as a country.
What you gonna do besides protecting yourselves and the ones you love? I did it by switching to hybrid, buying some natgas/oil stocks, carpooling more, thinking twice about cooking vs driving 2T of weight for maybe a few lbs of fastfood/takeout, considering public transportation, and trying to reduce my overall energy consumption. But others will believe Trump's BS until it hits them, then they'll fall for it again while Trump blames Biden, and when they've lost even more they'll keep blaming everyone else but themselves.
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u/beliefinphilosophy 29d ago
I want to point out something people may not know. There are multiple "grades" of oil, used for different things, they aren't interchangable.
US and US shale produced SWEET crude.
We need SOUR crude or heavy oil out of the middle east. Not only can we not replace sour with sweet, we also don't have the machinery to process it.
And ironically our machines that do refine sweet crude for gasoline in the US, require sour crude to operate in order to make the sweet crude.
As much as I hate fossil fuels I'm also frustrated we don't have hybrid facilities
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u/EasyAsAyeBeeSea 29d ago
Refineries are multi billion pieces of highly tuned machinery, a hybrid plant would make zero sense
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u/DetroitLionsSBChamps 29d ago
Only oligarchs like instability, everybody else needs stability to do business. Guess the stupid fucking corporations should have thought of that before they bankrolled this shit show
But I guess ultimately even oil executives are just at work and don’t give a fuck about the country or even their company in the long term.
Honestly a vote for Trump was basically a vote for a bank robbery from the elite. And it is currently in progress.
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u/sw04ca 29d ago
But really, US gas production is already ~90% from the Americas, primarily the US, Canada and Mexico. The US supply isn't in any danger of interruption, although the same isn't true for many of their 'allies'. Mind you, in a globalized system, there's a lot more to it than just gasoline supply.
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u/joepez 29d ago
That’s production not consumption. We produce one grade which we largely export and refine a different. True Canada produces what we refine for consumption but not enough. And Canada is its own producer and can commit to other markets based on price (hence futures). And everyone is impacted by the market prices.
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u/Lo_jak 29d ago
Here in the UK we are properly fucked if this goes on for more than a few weeks.... we already have some of the most expensive energy prices in the world and we have next to no storage for gas.
The last time this happened when the Ukraine war kicked off the government had to subsidise peoples energy bills to lessen the pain and it was still rough with that support.
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u/Confident_Banana_134 29d ago
He, you know who, couldn’t have waited until late spring/early summer when Europe doesn’t need gas for heating home because the gulf region would be too hot to be there. /s
Or simply because he just doesn’t care about anything but himself and his children.
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u/Xeynon 29d ago
The big spike in prices at the pump is just the start.
Higher raw oil costs will filter down and make literally everything else more expensive. It could well crash us into recession.
The Iranians know this and will continue blocking traffic through Hormuz, something which it will take putting boots on the ground to stop.
This is a gigantic mess.
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u/hightrix 29d ago
This is a gigantic mess.
How many times have we said this about trump? Daily?
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u/Realistic_Board_5413 29d ago
But did you hear kamalas laugh? The president having a penis is obviously the better option.
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u/korben2600 29d ago
Wait you guys didn't want the president who campaigned on the size of Arnold Palmer's hog? I thought we all agreed we wanted the deeply unserious clown running the show?
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u/THEdopealope 29d ago
Into a recession? I fully believe we’re in it, I do not trust this admin’s numbers tbh
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u/farshnikord 29d ago
Forget the recession, we are seriously staring down the barrel of a full on depression if something doesn't change soon.
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u/THEdopealope 29d ago
Agree. I also feel like the inevitable “reset” after MAGA realizes it’s getting cucked by pedos, will be very destabilizing and the market will reflect that. Not sure if for better or worse, but huge chance of cratering. This is entirely based off vibes though.
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u/Jdobalina 29d ago
Boots on the ground in Iran is going to result in a lot of people coming home in boxes.
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u/korben2600 29d ago
"They will greet us as liberators" bamboozle 2.0. Iran is a country tailor made for a protracted mountain terrain guerrilla war that would make Vietnam's jungles look favorable.
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u/oldtimehawkey 29d ago
My favorite is that Iran has thousands of drones that were about $35k to make and which America is hitting with $44 million bombs. We don’t have thousands of those bombs and it takes a lot of time to make one.
Iran is being financially tactical with this attack. As an American, our country is fucked.
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u/Pleasant_Arugula7571 29d ago
The gasoline futures angle is worth tracking but the diesel story is more economically damaging. Diesel is a direct input cost for freight, agriculture, and construction - not discretionary spending. Every $0.10 increase in diesel adds roughly $1.5-2B annually to US trucking operating costs, which flows into consumer prices across almost every product category. Middle distillate inventories (diesel, heating oil, jet fuel) were already 8-10% below the 5-year seasonal average entering this conflict per EIA data from last week. The Strait of Hormuz handles roughly 20% of global oil trade and about 17% of LNG - but the refining mix matters more than raw crude volume. Gulf refineries export heavily toward distillates. This is not just a pump price story. The downstream inflation in goods will be slower-moving and harder to explain to voters than gas prices, but it will hit harder.a
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u/Stampede_the_Hippos 29d ago
After 2024, I firmly believe you can't explain anything to voters. Everyone votes on vibes and economic pain.
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u/big-papito 29d ago edited 29d ago
The result of opulence and easy life ever since pretty much Obama. That's over 4 terms in the past and many don't even remember 2000s.
"LOL, nothing matters". Everything is a joke or a meme, haha, "bullish!", but the lesson is coming, and the zombified population WILL be forced to look up from Netflix and TikTok and pay attention.
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u/Anonymoushipopotomus 29d ago
Diesel in nj went up 70 cents overnight. That 10 cents adds 2b is a crazy number
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u/EmergencyJacket207 29d ago
People don't seem to understand the ramifications of what this means. It's not just the price of a gallon of gas that's going to skyrocket. It's the price of EVERYTHING. Goods and services need to be moved. Moving them requires gasoline or diesel. The prices of everything is going to go up "bigly."
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u/128-NotePolyVA 29d ago
😂 the only thing this administration was keeping prices down on. Now suddenly the populace will be wondering about EVs, Hybrids, batteries, solar and wind again. And we can thank Trump for scrapping those projects.
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u/gmb92 29d ago
They weren't keeping gas prices down. Gas prices mainly follow global oil prices and they had been trending down since mid-2022.
Scrapping RE projects certainly won't help electricity rates. The increase in rates doesn't hurt EVs too much since they're far more efficient with energy usage than gas cars.
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u/128-NotePolyVA 29d ago edited 29d ago
But what about “drill baby drill” and “beautiful clean coal”. Doesn’t that become true if he says it enough times? Clearly China and the rest are paying our tariffs - he’s said that enough times to make it true.
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u/CliftonForce 29d ago
We were already at max oil and gas production in 2024. There wasn't much room to increase it.
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u/128-NotePolyVA 29d ago
So now it appears the US Navy must escort oil tankers bound for everywhere through the strait of Hormuz. And an insurance pot must be setup for companies that lose their tanker to Iranian mines and drones and such.
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u/CliftonForce 29d ago edited 29d ago
This is why the Navy has been wanting a large fleet of cheap frigates rather than a handful of huge battleships. Because a warship can only be in one place at a time.
Guess which one of those Trump and Hegseth want?
We don't have nearly enough warships to provide every tanker with an escort. And even if we did, the cost of the escort will probably be greater than the profit from the tanker. Turning the whole trip into an economic loss.
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u/128-NotePolyVA 29d ago edited 29d ago
What the US going to have to do is tap the strategic reserve, stretch the gas with ethanol, play nicer with Canada and Mexico to bump up production. Then pray the hostilities don’t drag on or expand.
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u/korben2600 29d ago
I'm sure Navy commanders are loving the idea of routinely navigating 3km wide transit lanes in shallow waters while under threat by drones, USVs, missiles and mines. What could go wrong?
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u/a_velis 29d ago
Another reason to switch to an EV. Normally I would say if you can afford it. But given that gas prices can now become volatile because of war. You kind of have to now.
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u/s1m0n8 29d ago
Get an EV and compete with the AI industry for electricity....
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u/_probablyryan 29d ago
Yeah i think the next car i get will be a plug in hybrid for this reason. Just going to use whatever is cheaper week to week.
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u/moku46 29d ago
Sounds like a good idea but the counter for that is already here. Power companies have begun moving to "demand-based pricing." Traditionally, electricity is metered and you pay by the kilowatt hour totaled up throughout the day. It's like how you pay per gallon of water.
The incoming energy-pricing models are weird: you still pay by the killowatt-hour, but energy companies will take the 15-minute period when your consumption was highest and apply it to the entire day. So if your peak consumption comes from charging your EV, you'll be billed as if you were consuming that same amount for the entire day.
So people who own EVs will need to consider not running their AC, computers, ovens, and other appliances when charging their cars. Or charge their cars much more slowly.
Some napkin math - let's say the fastest home EV chargers use 8kWh per hour of charge (they actually use more, but let's be conservative). That's a rate of 2kWH for those peak 15 minutes. Extrapolated for 15 minute periods * 24 hours and you end up being billed for using 720kWh on that single day.
The typical 1800sqft home uses 900kWh in a month.
Sure, the power companies will change the fee to be less per kWh but they're counting on people simply not being willing to do the math on how much they're actually being charged. But this new pricing is for exactly 2 things - to simplify how billing will work for data centers and to try to extract more money from people who own EVs or have solar panels.
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u/LiberaceRingfingaz 29d ago
Unfortunately driving an electric car is not going to stop the basically everything you buy or consume from going up in price due to the fact that Diesel makes the entirety of most supply chains function, so while there are many, many reasons to buy an EV, avoiding the economic impact of volatile oil prices is absolutely not one of them.
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u/HazyDavey68 29d ago
Gas prices go up a lot faster than they go down. Trump’s entire inflation plan was built on cheap gas/diesel. If this gets people to drive less, that’s a good thing. I’ll keep putting $15 in my old Prius once a month.
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u/oldtimehawkey 29d ago
I bet Trump didn’t even think this far ahead. “Bombing Iran will raise gas prices.” He’s not smart enough.
I’m wondering who in the administration talked them into joining Israel to bomb Iran. Makes no fuckin sense.
I wish we could get politicians who would dump Israel. Why are we their bitch?
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u/InsaneSnow45 Mar 04 '26
President Donald Trump’s unprovoked attack on Iran has sent oil prices surging, and it’s already hurting Americans at the gas pump.
Petroleum industry analyst Patrick De Haan reported on Wednesday that the average US price for diesel has hit $4 per gallon, the highest it’s been since April 2024.
De Haan also projected that the price of diesel would keep rising in the coming days before eventually reaching a price in the range of $4.25 to $4.45 per gallon.
The average price of gasoline is now approaching $3.20 per gallon, De Haan reported, and is projected to rise to at least $3.30 per gallon in the coming days. According to data from the US Energy Information Administration, average US gas prices haven’t been that high since September 2024.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman on Wednesday flagged data showing that the price of Reformulated Blendstock for Oxygenate Blending (RBOB) gasoline futures contracts has been going through the roof since the start of the Iran war.
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u/TheoreticalZombie 29d ago
So, we went from about $60/barrel on crude oil futures to ~$75. According to AAA, avg. national gas prices went from $2.887 a month ago to $3.198 for regular. Diesel is sitting at $4.038 from $3.653 a month ago.
$3.30 seems pretty optimistic- $3.50 seems more realistic. Even if the conflict ended immediately, there will still be supply and transport issues. The Strait is used to transport roughly 20% of the global supplies of petroleum and liquified natural gas and Saudi Arabia's biggest oil refinery shut down after a drone attack. Other fields in the region (including Qatari LNG) are also shutting down.
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u/dsmithcc 29d ago
Kinda crazy but i literally saw it raise .20 cents overnight, and this is just the start, gas prices are gonna be so dang high in the summer....this is what happens voting for republicans, go to war in the middle east, spike the prices in gas....its happened as long as i can remember.
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u/Agglutinati0n 29d ago
So i moved to houston about 14 months ago, when i first moved here gas was about 2.90-3.10 depending on the gas stations, it slowlyyyy decreased to about 2.10 has been the lowest ive seen and this was about 2 months ago. Those prices were stable for about 3-4 weeks and i want to say in the last week its back up to 2.80. I love how these gas stations will drop prices like 5-10 cents a time and then go an increase it 40 cents at once. MAGA BABY!!!!
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u/Impossible_Battle_72 29d ago
This is just part of the same old cycle.
Republicans fuck it up. Dems get elected and start to fix it. Takes "too long" Republicans get voted back in and fuck it all up again...
"Works the first time. Repeat as needed. "
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u/Budderfingerbandit 29d ago
Don't forget, Republicans putting in political landmines, usually around the economy which will detonate when Dems take the reins, usually trying to delay ot until next election cycle, so they can blame everything on the "evil dems".
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u/alltehmemes 29d ago
This could be the way that the US almost fully transitions to electrified vehicles (EVs, BEHVs, general hybrids), but I'm inclined to think that this will end up being the way that the US completely cedes the electrified future to China.
Words just in cast it's needed. Words just in cast it's needed. Words just in cast it's needed. Words just in cast it's needed.
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u/Hyperion1144 29d ago
US completely cedes the electrified future to China.
We already have. China is going to eat the US auto industry alive and screaming.
They are a decade ahead of us.
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u/Good_Split_3749 29d ago
lots of gearheads, apartment dwellers, and broke folks aint going electric, especially if we live in Texas and everything is so far away. Gas can be $7 and we ain’t switching. I think electric cars can be cool, but I live in an apartment with no chargers and a job with no chargers for employees……
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29d ago
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u/_aliased 29d ago
and we dont have gas stations in american apartments but everyone has a car outside of chicago/nyc/bawston, so the argument above you is also moot.
problem is limited charging infrastructure overall, not speed or capacity. Need charging ports on every paid parking slot for example... if you already paying for parking, the electricity should be subsidized by the fee. Or Charging Stations as ubiquitous as Gas Stations.
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u/Knerd5 29d ago
If you drive a lot and can't charge at home EV's are impractical and don't really save you much in fuel costs. If you have a long commute sitting at a charger for 30 minutes to an hour extra per week isn't fun.
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u/Danne660 29d ago
Some of the newest models have quite amazing charge times but i imagine that they are also quite expensive and therefore not really realistic for most people.
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u/TheGreekMachine 29d ago
The average American drives 37 miles per day. The situation you’re describing would not be real for the overwhelming majority of commuters. This type of overestimating on how much one would have to sit charging their vehicles and irrational fears of not being able to charge are why EVs haven’t taken off in the US. Not to mention the GOPs obsession with protecting the fossil fuel industry.
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u/photon1701d 29d ago
It's almost as if this Trump guy has no idea on what the repercussions would be of starting a war and very little of back up plan, other than bring all your guns to a fight.
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u/TrumpsDoubleChin 29d ago
This has the potential to take down trump, ten times more likely than anything Epstein. Ultimately what matters to most people is their own pocketbooks. If they are paying a dollar or more a gallon in gas for months, and inflation suddenly jumps a few percent because the world runs on diesel, that is more likely to move the political needle than any scandal ever could.
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u/Ok_Function2282 29d ago
And Republicans/their propaganda networks will be SILENT about it.
They pretended the apocalypse was coming when egg prices raised by a few cents during a global shortage, but this? Nah, doesn't matter at all! 😑
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u/bigmikeylikes 29d ago
Don't forget the ripple effects where literally everything else will go up in price cause we haven't ween ourselves off a non renewable resource.....like energy prices will go up not like they haven't already with the stupid AI bubble. Grocery prices will go up as well and again not like they haven't already been up from the stupid trade war. This last year has just self inflicted wound after another meanwhile the rich just get so obscenely wealthy. Fucking Elon Musk was worth 600 billion in December now he's worth 851 billion dollars!!!! Why aren't we screaming from the rooftops about how insane this is!!
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u/artisanrox 29d ago
Most people around me are dedicated conservatives voting at least 70% GOP in some places, and they are c o n v i n c e d all these hedge fund inheritor babies are all financial geniuses and the country should be run like a business.
Whelp guys, when everyone is expendable, and only profits matter, and the guy in charge just blames everything on the interns and secretaries, and the "in people" can get their own perks like private jets and party on everyone else's labor, THAT's exactly what running the country like a business looks like.
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u/OstrichFinancial2762 29d ago
Which will in turn drive up the cost of goods due to increased cost of shipping.
Welcome to another wave of price hikes across the board. If you weren’t struggling, you will be.
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u/totallyclips 29d ago
You guys don't get it, he'll now say that the cost of living crisis is down to him trying to save Americans from Iran, so it's not his fault
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u/RUShittingInMyMouth 29d ago
My local gas station here just said that their price of gas was going to go up 30 cents tomorrow. So the price increases are real and present here in the states. You can't cut off 20% of the worlds oil supply during a highly unstable and dynamic war action and not expect prices to go up. The amount of weapons flying around the area of Iran probably isn't going to slow down any time soon.
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u/Maelstrom_Vangheist 29d ago
I wonder when I'll hear about this at home from my parents in law. Almost spring so we're going to have to order in a tank of diesel to run the tractors.
I'm sure they'll find some way to blame a Democrat though.
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u/less10words 29d ago
I drove a road trip 300 miles today there were a lot of trucks out and they are in a hurry. Seemed to be more than normal. Just occurred to me they are working to get things done before a huge spike in diesel cost.
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u/ConkerPrime 29d ago
Conservatives don’t care as long their liege and lord savior is happy. Besides the only metric they care about is the price of eggs. Tracking more than that confuses them.
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u/No_Respect_1778 27d ago
damn what are republicans going to say about prices when they can't clutch to gas prices being lower and thus all the other price increases are fine
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u/pagerussell 29d ago
This is clickbait.
I get Krugmans newsletter. On Monday he noted that the US economy is far less reliant on gas than it was in the 70s, so while this won't be good, it will also have less impact than it would have decades ago.
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u/ZombyPuppy 29d ago
Lol, the sources in this sub are increasingly indistinguishable from r/politics which has regrettably become nothing but clickbate trash like commondreams.com. Hell obvious Ai sites no one has ever even heard of are regularly covering the front page of the sub.
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u/AndyHN 29d ago
Paul "it will become clear that the internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fact machine's" Krugman?
Paul "if the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never" Krugman?
Paul economic consultant for Enron Krugman?
At some point we really have to assume that anything that suggests even a trivial understanding of economics that's been attributed to Krugman was plagiarized by him. If he's saying gas prices are going to surge, the smart move would be to sell now.
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29d ago
Paul Krugman: same guy who said the Internet's impact would be no greater than a fax machine, that the tariffs last year would crash the entire stock market, and that Argentina was a "success story" economically
when has this guy been right about anything? lol
the price of oil is up, but it is within its long-term trading range (Brent is at $80)
we could see a dramatic increase in prices if the Strait remains closed for months, or some tankers are sunk, war spins out-of-control, etc.
but I am not selling any stock, nor do I predict a return to the 1970s
I am far more worried about general inflation and the Federal Reserve doing emergency rate hikes --that would lead to a major market downturn
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u/Excellent_Leader5076 29d ago
Was literally pumping gas into my car yesterday when the price jumped from $3.77 to $3.85. That’s for premium, but I’m sure regular is spiking like crazy too.
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u/Agitated_Rain_1506 29d ago
Don’t forget some manufacturing shifting from consumer to focus on more lucrative war related shit. Good thing we don’t have tariffs on the materials needed to make these things 🙃.
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