‘i Think The Conflict Will End’: Trump Officials Temper Gas-price Predictions

President Donald Trump’s team is no longer making predictions about energy prices.

That much was clear Wednesday when administration officials facing lawmakers declined to put a timetable when the war in Iran would end and the ensuing rise in energy prices would ease, instead offering vague assurances of their track record in lowering prices.

“I think the conflict will end, and I think gasoline prices will come back to where they were, or perhaps lower,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Senate appropriators.

Bessent declined to say Wednesday when the price of gasoline — now averaging above $4 per gallon, more than a dollar higher than when the war started — will come down. Instead, he told Senate appropriators that it depended on the length of the war.

“That is path dependent on when the war and the conflict end,” he said.

That’s a marked shift in rhetoric from previous public appeals asking for reassurance on energy price spikes two months after Trump launched the strikes in the Middle East and Iran retaliated by attacking oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, choking off nearly 20 percent of the world’s oil supply and straining the global economy. Trump himself originally said the war, now nearing its second month, would last “four to five weeks.”

Energy Secretary Chris Wright, also appearing at a hearing Wednesday, walked back a comment he made over the weekend that U.S. gasoline prices could stay above $3 per gallon until next year — a suggestion Trump publicly refuted.

“I never said gas prices wouldn’t go down until next year,” Wright said at the hearing. “Never, never said such a thing. There was a thing on the news that I said they might not be below $3 a gallon. … I left some uncertainty in there.”

“No one can offer guarantees about the future,” Wright also said when asked about fuel prices. He instead pointed out that pump prices are still lower than the peak they hit during the Biden administration.

Wright previously said energy prices will climb higher until “meaningful” ship traffic resumes through Hormuz.

Republicans on Wednesday acknowledged how challenging it is for the administration to predict a precise timeline for prices, but also backed the administration’s efforts to confront Iran.

“My advice to you is to stay away from this business of how fast the price of gas is going to come down. I don’t want to get off on that tangent,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told Wright. “The safest thing to say is ‘soon.’”

Trump officials and the president himself have until now often predicted the war with Iran will likely end in a matter of weeks, with energy prices to fall soon after. But Iran’s attacks on oil tankers attempting to sail through Hormuz and the will-they-or-won’t-they dynamics of international peace talks have sent prices at the pump up by more than a third since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran. Oil prices that drive those gasoline prices also remain volatile — just as drivers are about to hit the road for summer vacations.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum barely addressed the war or energy prices at another Senate hearing on Wednesday. Almost exactly a month ago, he predicted elevated energy prices would be a matter of weeks, not months.

On Monday, during a separate appearance on the Hill, Burgum blamed Democratic policies like those in California that have led to particularly high prices, and drew a distinction between prices today and higher, peak prices under former President Joe Biden.

Democrats, meanwhile, accused the administration of obfuscating the truth of when prices would ease. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told reporters that Wright “spoke the truth” when he said oil prices might not come down before the end of the year.

“That’s the consensus of experts,” Blumenthal said. “He spoke the truth until his chain was yanked by Donald Trump, who is his audience of one, and I think that they can be in denial, but consumers know from the gasoline pumps they pass every day what the reality is.”

Oil industry officials and analysts have warned that prices are likely to remain elevated long after the fighting ends. Persian Gulf countries will need to repair oil fields and export facilities that Iran has destroyed, and shippers will likely remain wary of traversing the Strait of Hormuz.

“The best-case scenario for [shipping] getting back to pre-war levels would be June — and this scenario is predicated on a firm, long-term settlement between the U.S. and Iran being finalized over the next few weeks,” Pavel Molchanov, energy industry analyst at Raymond James, said in an email. “The longer it takes to reach such a settlement, the longer it will take for shipping to normalize.”

Bessent reiterated the administration’s ongoing claim that price increases are only temporary.

But his reassurances came even as his department makes moves that appear to tacitly acknowledge the war will have a prolonged impact on the economy.

Last week, he pledged the department would not extend a sanctions waiver for allowing for the sale of Russian crude already on the water, only to do so days later. ClearView Energy Partners, a research firm, called the reversal “a tacit Administration recognition of dire global oil supply conditions that seem likely to persist.”

Bessent told senators Wednesday that he had planned to let the waiver expire, but was approached by “more than 10 of the most vulnerable and poorest countries in terms of energy” who asked him to extend the sanctions relief.

“Just as you are concerned about gasoline prices, for the American consumer and for our Asian allies, as are we,” he told Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.). “Treasury was able to create more than 250 million barrels on the water” by relieving sanctions on oil in transit.

Bessent also said that countries in the region and in Asia have engaged with the Treasury Department to set up swap lines, suggesting that the conflict may have long-term impact on economies in the Middle East and beyond. In an exchange with Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Bessent played down recent reports that the United Arab Emirates asked Treasury for a currency swap line, as the Emirati economy and financial system experienced strains from the war.

“Many of our Gulf allies have requested swap lines,” Bessent said, and said that Asian allies have discussed setting them up, too. “Swap lines, whether from the Federal Reserve or the Treasury, are to maintain order in the dollar funding market and to prevent the sale of U.S. assets in a disorderly way. The swap line would both benefit the UAE and the U.S.”

Still, anxiety about high energy prices has bubbled up around the country.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said at a hearing on Wednesday that some communities in her state have been “panicked” by high fuel prices, particularly Alaska Native towns in isolated areas that rely on infrequent shipments of diesel fuel.

While she acknowledged her support for the Trump administration’s push to open up more Alaskan lands to oil and gas development, she said it will be a long time before that could influence prices.

“Everyone is facing high prices at the pump,” Murkowski said. “Very few feel it as acutely as an Alaska off-road village that is 100 percent reliant on diesel power generation.”

Ian Stevenson, Pavan Acharya and c contributed to this report.