Trump’s Iran speech ignores risks of a return to the 1970s

President Donald Trump is taking a triumphal tone as he plans to address the nation Wednesday night about the Iran war. But there is reason to worry that the conflict and its economic consequences for Americans may get worse before they get better. If so, Trump will struggle to shake off the damaging political legacy of the war.

In that he would join a long line of U.S. presidents going back to the 1970s who have seen their tenures defined by energy crisis and inflation — the economic scourge Trump has called a “nation-buster.” 

“The oil shock of the ’70s was planted in the maybe subterranean part of our brains,” said Jay Hakes, a presidential historian who led the U.S. Energy Information Administration in the 1990s during the Clinton administration. 

“It was there for a long time because it was just such a jolt. And I think this will be that kind of jolt,” Hakes said.

Gas prices on Tuesday rose above $4 a gallon on average for the first time since the war began. Gas has followed Brent crude prices that have risen 27% since the war began to just over $100 a barrel Wednesday. Oil tankers and other commercial shippers that would normally travel through the narrow Strait of Hormuz off Iran’s southern coast have been idled due to Iran’s threats and attacks. The waterway normally carries 20% of the world’s oil. 

But $4 a gallon gas, painful as it is, may only be the tip of the iceberg. That is clearer in the rest of the world than the U.S., for now. The U.K. is set to receive its last shipment of jet fuel for the foreseeable future this week. Prices of jet fuel worldwide are up 96%, according to Platts data published by the International Air Transport Association. Futures contracts for liquid natural gas in Japan and South Korea are up 43%, according to FactSet data. 

Asia and to a lesser extent Europe are more immediately exposed to disruptions in supply from the Strait of Hormuz. Unlike the U.S. — as Trump has repeatedly pointed out — they buy directly from the Middle East. But all of these commodities are connected through global markets. Disruptions in one part of the world will quickly spread to others. Analysts fear the price of oil could jump above the record near $150 a barrel set in July 2008 during the Great Recession.

So far, the world has benefited from energy supplies that were already in transit when the war began just over a month ago, aided by emergency releases from strategic petroleum reserves. But the world is burning through those supplies. 

“With even the modest estimates we have now, the loss of oil in April will be twice the loss of oil in March,” International Energy Agency Executive Director Fatih Birol said on a podcast released Wednesday.