President Donald Trump’s war of choice in Iran has cost U.S. consumers at least $100 billion in added fuel expenses since Feb. 28, according to Brown University’s Climate Solutions Lab.
Researchers estimate that the war has created an additional burden of $55 billion due to higher gasoline prices and $45 billion due to higher diesel prices as of Labor Day. They arrive at that figure by setting actual prices this year against estimates of what prices would have been without the war-induced surge in oil prices, then multiplying it by expected fuel usage.
The tab translates to an average hit of $750 per household, though families with multiple cars and long commutes would bear more.
“Energy price shocks function as an economy-wide, unacknowledged tax on American households, with costs comparable to large federal programs and policies,” the group said in a statement Tuesday.
For context, researchers noted, the $100 billion in added fuel costs is roughly the same as the federal government’s annual spending on the Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps.
Oil prices have shot up since the U.S. and Israel launched their war and Iran choked off the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shippingway that carries about a quarter of the world’s oil supply. Prices have dropped at times only to bounce back up, just as they did on Tuesday, nearing $100 per barrel again due to the standoff in the strait.
The price of gasoline was below $3 per gallon on average before the war and now hovers at $4.15 as of Tuesday, according to AAA. The higher prices at the pump have helped drive public support for the war to just 31% and Trump’s approval rating to a mere 33%, according to a recent Reuters/Ipsos survey.
Though less visible than the price of gasoline, the higher cost of diesel fuel has also squeezed Americans’ wallets since the war began. Diesel fuel is used in large trucks, farm machinery and power generation, so households “bear these increases through higher prices from their grocery stores, utility bills, and across the economy,” the Brown researchers noted.
President Donald Trump gestures while boarding Air Force One at Morristown Airport on Monday, Sept. 7 in Morristown, N.J.
Jeff Colgan, a political science professor at Brown and director of the Climate Solutions Lab, told HuffPost last month that they created the Iran War Energy Cost Tracker so that people could easily visualize how much the war cost — not to the Pentagon but to everyday Americans.
“Once you start to add it up and see what else we could have spent that money on, it really hits a nerve for people,” Colgan said.
Trump, who campaigned for the White House in part on a pledge to end “forever” wars, initially said the U.S. would be out of Iran in a matter of weeks. The conflict passed the six-month mark a little over a week ago, however, and the president has struggled to find a face-saving way to extract himself.
On top of the financial cost, the war has led to 18 service member deaths and roughly 800 wounded. Trump recently downplayed those losses by comparing them to the much larger toll of the Vietnam War.
“I’ll tell you what, a lot of people don’t call it a war,” Trump said of the fighting in Iran. “I call it a military conflict because it’s small potatoes for us. It’s not a big thing. We did Venezuela, and we did this. In Venezuela, we lost nobody, and this we lost 18 people. In Vietnam, you lost a hundred thousand people, and in other conflicts you lost tens of thousands of people.”
“It certainly doesn’t feel like small potatoes, Mr. President,” replied ABC News’ Rachel Scott. “Eighteen people have died in this.”