Following President Trump’s address to the nation on Wednesday about the Iran War, stock markets suffered losses while oil prices rose. The decline in stocks and increase in oil prices reflected disappointment over President Trump’s failure to articulate a plan to end the Iran War and the related restraint of shipping through of the Strait of Hormuz.
The average gas price in America has risen to over four dollars per gallon since the US and Israel launched their war against Iran at the end of February. The increased cost of gas is raising prices at the pump and, by increasing shipping costs, resulting in higher prices at grocery stores and even on Amazon.
According to media reports, President Trump and his advisers dismissed the possibility that Iran would use its ability to limit or even cease oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz in order to drive up fuel prices. They dismissed the possibility even though disrupting oil shipments is the best way Iran can damage the US economy and make even America’s staunchest allies unwilling to take any action that could be seen as supporting the war. Fear of Iranian retribution may be why NATO countries rejected the president’s request that they send military support to the Strait of Hormuz to protect the free transport of oil.
President Trump’s contradictory statements regarding how close the US is to victory (and what victory will consist of) as well as whether he intends to establish a military presence at the Strait of Hormuz reflect the dilemma President Trump is facing when it comes to Iran. If the president sends troops to protect the Strait of Hormuz or sends troops into Iran, then he will lose more support from those who voted for him because he promised to be a peacemaker, not a warmonger.
Continuing to ignore the damage the increase in fuel costs is causing Americans will hurt Republicans in November’s midterm elections. This could result in President Trump facing a Democrat-controlled Congress in his final two years in office.
President Trump recently stated the federal government cannot afford to pay for daycare and other social programs because it has to spend so much money on the military and war. Of course, the Constitution does not authorize the federal government to run either a welfare state or a global empire.
The massive federal expenditure on militarism deprives the American people of the resources needed to create an effective private “safety net” for those in need. Yet, President Trump wants to increase the military budget to 1.5 trillion dollars — a 40 percent increase — even though the United States already spends more on “defense” than the combined defense budgets of the next nine biggest spending countries!
This spending will be paid for via the Federal Reserve’s inflation tax. This will further increase costs for Americans. The inflation tax hits middle and lower income Americans the hardest.
A saying among some antiwar libertarians and progresses, coined by Tom Woods, expresses the idea that whoever is elected president you end up with the militaristic foreign policy of the late Senator John McCain. President Trump’s commitment to continuing and expanding intervention in the Middle East and beyond, as well as to dramatically increasing spending to accomplish this task, suggests an exception to the rule: President Trump might be worse than John McCain.