We Started a War in February. The Bill Arrived in April.
Pull up to a gas station this week and the math stops making sense. Four dollars and eighteen cents per gallon, the highest pump price in four years, and we are supposedly the largest oil producer on the planet. How exactly does that work?
It works because oil is a global market, and a single waterway off the coast of Iran moves roughly twenty percent of the world’s seaborne crude. When the Strait of Hormuz closes, the price of everything we burn, eat, ship, and build climbs alongside it. February’s military strikes on Iran kicked off a chain reaction that has not stopped, and the Council on Foreign Relations is now warning that what looked like a strong economy in 2025 is on genuinely shaky ground heading into November.
The numbers tell the story. Inflation jumped from 2.4 percent in February to 3.3 percent in March, driven mostly by a 21 percent surge in gas prices. The OECD says we could see inflation hit 4.2 percent this year. The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index just collapsed to 47.6, a record low, lower than anything recorded during the pandemic, lower than during the 2008 crash. People are not imagining the squeeze. They are living it.
And the squeeze is just getting started. Fertilizer ships through Hormuz too, which means the farmers who feed us are about to pay more for the inputs that grow our food. The World Bank is projecting a 24 percent surge in energy prices and a 16 percent jump in commodity costs across 2026. Mortgage rates have already climbed back above 6.25 percent, killing the modest housing rebound that was finally giving first time buyers a sliver of hope. The Fed cannot rescue us either, because cutting rates to fight unemployment would pour gasoline on the inflation fire, and raising rates to kill inflation would crush jobs. Welcome to stagflation, the word every economist hoped we would never hear again.
Then there are the slow burns nobody is talking about loudly enough. Amazon and Meta have laid off thousands. College graduates cannot find entry level work. Private credit, the shadow lending world that has ballooned outside the regulated banking system, is starting to draw comparisons to the subprime mess that blew up 2008. The Supreme Court struck down the administration’s tariffs, and businesses now have no idea what trade policy will look like in six months, which is precisely the kind of uncertainty that freezes hiring and investment.
Politically, this is a wrecking ball. Only 30 percent of voters approve of how the White House is handling the economy. Sixty percent disapprove. The president recently called affordability a “Democratic hoax,” which is a strange thing to say to a country where nearly half of adults name prices as the single biggest problem facing the nation. Thirty eight House Republicans have already announced they will not seek reelection. They can read the room.
Here is the harder truth. Even if Hormuz reopens tomorrow, the damage is done. Qatari LNG capacity could take three to five years to repair. Fertilizer shortages cannot be fixed during planting season. Inflation expectations, once they entrench, take years to break. We started this war, and we are going to live with its bill long after the cameras leave.
The question is not whether we feel the pain. We already do. The question is whether the people we elect in November understand that a foreign policy decision made in February became a kitchen table reality by April. If they do not, we will keep paying for it long after the next administration takes the oath. Go beyond the headlines…
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