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center for american progress
Johnson Vows Gas Price Hikes ‘Just a Temporary Blip.’ Expert Analyses Warn Otherwise
"Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, and Qatar have no bypass capability whatsoever," said one expert. "Their shipments are wholly reliant on Hormuz transit."
Mar 11, 2026
House Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to downplay the rise in gas prices caused by President Donald Trump's war with Iran, but energy analysts are warning that Americans are in for significant pain at the pump.
Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, Johnson (R-La.) said that the rise in gas prices was a small price to pay for achieving American military objectives in Iran, which he baselessly claimed was about to strike the US if the US didn't strike first.
Johnson also predicted that the rise in gas prices, which on Wednesday reached an average of $3.58 per gallon in the US, would be short lived.
"Most of this is because the Strait of Hormuz has been closed by the regime down there," Johnson said. "But it will be reopened, and it will take a couple of weeks, but gas prices will come back down... So this is a temporary blip in an extraordinary trend of a return to American energy dominance."
Despite Johnson's rosy assessment, energy experts Trevor Higgins and Akshay Thyagarajan of the Center for American Progress published an analysis on Wednesday explaining why there will be no quick fix for high gas prices.
What's more, the analysts said that the Iran conflict appeared ready to raise prices on much more than just gasoline.
"Many parts of the US economy are still dependent on fossil fuels, and higher prices for oil and gas increase the prices for gasoline, electricity, fertilizer, food, and more," they noted. "As long as this war continues—and perhaps for some time thereafter—American households will pay higher prices at the pump, on their utility bills, and on their grocery bills."
Higgins and Thyagarajan documented how the Iran war's impact on oil prices was already greater than the impact that Russia's invasion of Ukraine had in 2022, and they warned it would only grow more severe the longer the conflict persisted.
One particularly worrisome impact of the Iran war, Higgins and Thyagarajan said, would be putting upward pressure on Americans' utility bills, which have already been rising significantly over the last year thanks to the enormous energy demands of artificial intelligence data centers.
They pointed to the dependence of US power infrastructure on liquified natural gas (LNG), which generates roughly 43% of electricity in the US, as a serious vulnerability.
"Following the start of Operation Epic Fury, both European and Asian LNG futures prices have already skyrocketed," they wrote. "As of March 9, they’ve increased by 77% and 51%, respectively, compared to prices before the event. This price increase is much higher than the increase immediately after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. If this increase persists, it could raise utility bills further."
Clayton Seigle, energy analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said on Monday that there was very little hope of US gas prices decreasing until Iran reopened the Strait of Hormuz for commercial shipping.
Seigle said that Iran could wage a relatively cheap military campaign against ships attempting to traverse the strait using a combination of speedboats, naval mines, and drones.
"Their destructive firepower is less than that of missiles," he wrote, "but sufficient to cause damage and deter commercial shipping."
Seigle also dismissed any plans by other oil-producing nations to ship their products through alternative trade routes, which he said would do too little to ease the oil supply crisis caused by the strait's closure.
" Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, and Qatar have no bypass capability whatsoever," he explained. "Their shipments are wholly reliant on Hormuz transit."
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Trump's War of Choice in Iran Has Cost US Taxpayers Over $10 Billion in Just 10 Days
The estimated spending on the Iran war in just over a week amounts to over 1% of the 2026 US defense budget.
Mar 11, 2026
The cost of President Donald Trump's unprovoked and unconstitutional war with Iran has already cost US taxpayers billions of dollars, and will cost billions more if the conflict drags on.
Anadolu Ajansı on Monday published an estimate that the Iran war cost $10.35 billion over its first 10 days, or more than 1% of the entire 2026 US defense budget.
The US spent an estimated $779 million in the war's first 24 hours alone, and Anadolu noted that daily costs have gone up since then.
Specifically, Anadolu found that as "the campaign has expanded, operational spending has climbed into the billions, based on estimated flight hours, maintenance costs, and munitions expenditures derived from the US Department of Defense’s 2025 and 2026 budget requests."
In the days since Anadolu published its estimate, the estimated cost of the war has soared past $11 billion, according to a tracker that assumes the assault is costing the US $1 billion per day, based on preliminary figures from the Pentagon.
The Washington Post reported on Monday that the US Department of Defense estimated that it burned through $5.6 billion worth of munitions in the initial strikes on Iran, raising questions about whether the war has seriously eroded US military readiness.
Due to the conflict's rapidly escalating costs, the Trump administration is expected to ask US Congress for a $50 billion supplemental funding bill to keep the war going.
Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, and Damian Murphy, senior vice president of national security and international policy at the Center for American Progress, released a memo on Monday explaining why Congress should not agree to any White House requests for supplemental funding.
First, the memo notes that polling shows that the Iran war is unprecedentedly unpopular, being the first US war ever to have a net negative approval rating at the outset of the conflict.
"Lawmakers in Congress have the upper hand both morally and politically in opposing the war in Iran," the memo states. "The public does not want to be drawn into another forever war that threatens American lives, kills children, destabilizes the Middle East, and whose costs could easily balloon to hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars."
The memo then argues that the massive increase in defense spending contained in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was passed by Republicans in last year and signed into law by Trump, should be more than enough to cover the cost of replacing munitions.
"The 'Big Beautiful Bill' provided an additional $153 billion for defense just eight months ago," the memo explains, "on top of the annual defense budget of around $900 billion. The annual defense appropriations bill, also approved only a few months ago, grants the White House the legal authority and flexibility to move around billions of dollars within the Department of Defense to achieve their goals, known as transfer authority."
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Estimated Cost of Trump Naval Blockade of Venezuela Climbs Toward $1 Billion
"US military power is being used as a de facto security force for the president's corporate donors and their oil interests, leaving the American taxpayer to effectively subsidize a security force for Big Oil."
Jan 08, 2026
As Congress weighs action to rein in the Trump administration's assault on Venezuela—as demanded by people across the United States and Latin America—Fortune on Thursday highlighted the rising cost of just the US oil blockade on the country.
The ongoing US naval blockade "has cost an estimated $700 million and counting, with two more oil tankers seized January 7, as President Donald Trump aims to sell more Venezuelan crude oil to American refineries and convince U.S. oil companies to return to embattled nation," the outlet reported.
That's based on a Center for a New American Security analysis that put the cost of operating the USS Gerald R. Ford and its aircraft carrier strike group in the region since October at more than $9 million a day—which does not account for Trump's illegal strikes on alleged drug smuggling boats or the weekend abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
Fortune's article followed December reporting on "the lopsided cost of Operation Southern Spear" from Defense One:
The estimates for every hour of the carrier’s operation is roughly $333,000, while each escort consumes a comparatively cheaper $9,200 per hour.
For the aircraft, the cost per flight hour is roughly $40,000 for the F-35s and the AC-130J; $29,900 for the P-8s; and $3,500 for the Reaper drones.
Then there are the munitions used in the attacks themselves. Analysis of the strike videos show that U.S. forces have fired Hellfire missiles (about $150,000 to $220,000 apiece) AGM-176 Griffins ($127,333 in FY2019 costs), and perhaps GBU-39B Small Diameter Bombs (roughly $40,000 each).
And on the personnel side, there is the pay and benefits for the roughly 15,000 US service members who have been deployed so far in the operation, including 5,000 ashore in Puerto Rico and 2,200 Marines aboard ships.
As for "Operation Absolute Resolve," as the US called the mission to abduct Maduro and Flores, the administration has not disclosed costs, but Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that nearly 200 special forces took part in the deadly raid.
The New York Times reported Saturday that "the military had been readying for days to execute the mission," and "in the run-up, Delta Force commandos rehearsed the extraction inside a full-scale model of Mr. Maduro's compound that the Joint Special Operations Command had built in Kentucky."
After being abducted, Maduro and his wife pleaded not guilty to narco-terrorism charges in a federal court in New York City. Trump has continued to make clear that his costly operations are not actually about drugs, but seizing Venezuelan oil. Senate Democrats are now probing possible dealings between his administration and fossil fuel executives related to the US attack on Saturday.
As the U.S. pursues regime change in Venezuela, it's worth remembering that the U.S.-led post-9/11 wars left millions dead and cost U.S. taxpayers trillions, with no strategic benefit to the citizens of the U.S. or any other nation. www.wsj.com/world/americ...
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— The Costs of War Project (@costsofwar.bsky.social) January 5, 2026 at 12:05 PM
On Tuesday, a pair of experts at the Center for American Progress (CAP) noted that the fossil fuel industry gave at least $96 million to Trump's 2024 campaign and super political action committees, "over $100 million to Trump allies and ads supporting policies championed by these allies, and more through undisclosed dark money channels," and then "contributed at least $41 million to either the inaugural fund or Trump's super PAC after the election."
"However, it is unclear whether many American oil companies actually view Venezuela as an attractive prospect: With prices hovering around $60 per barrel of oil, companies have been reluctant to make major new investments," explained CAP's Damian Murphy Allison McManus. "Venezuela's oil infrastructure will require billions of dollars to update in the medium term, and the political instability and potential security breakdowns that come from removing a head of state create a poor environment for long-term investments."
"That isn't to say that companies are completely uninterested: Some US oil companies are looking to collect billions of dollars from the country over decades-old seized oil assets," they continued. "To sweeten the deal, Trump recently has floated the prospect of subsidizing companies for rebuilding infrastructure. Still, this tepid response from the industry only underscores the chaotic and reckless nature of the administration’s foreign policymaking, which has adopted an 'act first, plan later' approach."
The pair also pointed out that "Trump has repeatedly suggested that boots on the ground could be used to guarantee access to oil resources, with the current buildup of forces signaling that a 'second wave' of military action is on standby. In essence, US military power is being used as a de facto security force for the president's corporate donors and their oil interests, leaving the American taxpayer to effectively subsidize a security force for Big Oil."
Alarmed by Trump's recent actions in and around Venezuela, the Senate on Thursday advanced a bipartisan war powers resolution—but so far, the measure still lacks the Republican support needed to get to a final vote. Even if it passed the upper chamber, the legislation would also need to get through the GOP-controlled House of Representatives.
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