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Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio blamed Biden for the rise in gas prices in a tweet on Monday, noting that the average gas price had risen 86 cents per gallon from June 2020 to June 2021 and pointed out ” President Biden’s economy! ” to explain the price difference. Similar arguments have been made by Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa as well as right-wing groups on social media.
The facts first: It is misleading to blame the president for high gas prices, especially since one of the main reasons for the surge is that the US economy is restarting – which is not a bad news for a president in office for 5 months. Supply chains are complex and if there is one thing to remember about rising gas prices, it’s the pandemic, which has lowered global production of oil – and many other goods – the last year as demand collapsed. After the pandemic restrictions were removed, supply has failed to catch up with new demand as the economy begins to recover and people hit the road, experts told CNN.
According to the US Energy Information Administration, crude oil production in the United States fell 8% in 2020 compared to 2019, which is the “largest annual decline recorded by the US Energy Information Administration.”
The drop in oil production follows a “sudden drop in demand for oil” caused by the coronavirus pandemic, according to the EIA report.
The price of gasoline rose significantly in 2021, from an average of $ 2.42 per gallon in January to $ 3.076 in May. The price per gallon remained at levels above $ 3 for almost 4 years following the Great Recession from December 2010 to November 2014.
“At this point, there is no plausible connection between Biden’s appointment as president and the increase in gasoline prices,” said Severin Borenstein, professor of business administration and public policy at the ‘University of California at Berkeley.
Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, a website that tracks the price of gas, also suggested that the rise in gas prices is due to a recent increase in demand following the drop caused by the pandemic. , not to changes in the president’s policy.
“It’s not a political issue. It’s more of a Covid-19 challenge simply because of how Covid-19 decimated fuel demand last year,” De Haan told CNN. “Although the prices are much higher this year than last year, it is because of the recovery, the economic recovery. As more Americans come out, the demand for gasoline has skyrocketed since then. a year.”
The White House has also rebuffed Jordan’s charges, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki tweeting that “gas prices are the same as in June 2018”.
According to De Haan, although this is not entirely correct, the difference is not large.
“June 2018, you might find the national average at 2.96 a gallon, which is just 11 cents lower than where we are today,” De Haan told CNN.
“Jim Jordan’s tweet, I would say, lacks context and, in my opinion, certainly wrongly puts the blame on Biden’s economy,” DeHaan said. “If President Trump had been in power, prices would have also, absolutely guaranteed, gone up. ”
Gas prices are not something that presidents usually have a lot of direct influence on. As the EIA notes, the price of gas is determined by four main factors: taxes, marketing and distribution costs, refining, and the cost of crude oil. The policies adopted by Biden have not currently had any significant effect on any of these four factors.
Similar to the economy, whose presidents try to take credit when it does well or blame their predecessors when it performs poorly, any attempt to attribute the increase in gas prices solely to Biden is not only incorrect but ignores the complexities of the oil and gas industry.
While Biden’s climate change policy proposals could affect future gas production in the United States, according to an EIA forecast released on June 15, several global variables at play will affect the price of oil and gas in the United States. – beyond the control of the US president – including how much crude oil Iran produces and whether OPEC + countries stick to their oil production agreements.
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