President Donald Trump returned to office promising to end foreign entanglements. Now his legacy increasingly rests on one.
As his war with Iran hits its six-month mark, the conflict is upending his presidency. Rising gas prices are squeezing consumers and fueling anxiety across party lines. Inflation is rattling bond markets and raising borrowing costs. Supply chain snarls and military equipment shortages risk creating further instability around the world.
The president who repeatedly pledged to avoid his predecessors’ missteps overseas is now seeing his own agenda derailed by an unpopular war.
None of this should surprise Trump. For decades, he mocked presidents who struggled with foreign policy challenges — Jimmy Carter’s Iranian hostage crisis, George W. Bush’s eight-year war in Iraq and Joe Biden’s rushed exit from Afghanistan. During his first term, eyeing a re-election campaign, Trump managed to limit his foreign excursions to avoid falling into this very trap.
Now the president faces an election season without his name on the ballot, but with his war in the background. Here’s how that could play out for the economy, control of Congress and international tensions.
The toll on the U.S. economy
The everyday costs of war are mounting. Americans today are paying an average of $4.10 a gallon for gasoline, up almost 30% from a year earlier, far from the $2 a gallon the president promised on the campaign trail. The total hit to U.S. households from higher gasoline and diesel costs since the war began tops $92 billion, or more than $700 per household, according to Brown University’s Iran War Energy Cost Tracker.
Overall, the typical American household spent has spent more than $1,000 extra as a result of the war due to higher fuel prices, groceries, interest rates and other costs, Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi estimated this summer.
Trump has tried to downplay the hit to consumers, calling the higher costs “a tiny bit more” to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon. “I’ll never apologize,” he said earlier this month. “I did the right thing.”
It could have been worse. Oil prices have averaged well below $100 a barrel throughout the conflict. One reason is that Trump has repeatedly kept markets guessing about whether he might abruptly end the war, an outcome that could send prices sharply lower.
Yet it still could get much worse: The U.S. military has been quietly guiding oil through the Strait of Hormuz in recent weeks, but renewed fighting with Iran could end that quickly. Gasoline prices are already at their highest levels ever for this time of year; any further spikes would likely exacerbate inflation worries, send bond yields even higher and spook investors in the stock market.
The economic toll of the war is exposing the shortcomings of Trump’s promises to supercharge growth. His Treasury secretary last year laid out a “3-3-3” plan to raise the growth of gross domestic product to 3%; reduce the federal budget deficit to 3% of GDP; and get the U.S. to pump 3 million more barrels of oil a day than before. Each of those goals remains far off target.
Trump’s political price
The war is deeply unpopular. Just 31% of respondents approved of the conflict with Iran in a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Monday, the lowest since the war began — largely due to souring sentiment among Republicans.
Trump’s overall approval rating stood at just 33%, with 64% disapproval, tying the lowest point of either of his terms in office. But perhaps the bigger concern for Republicans this fall: Americans now trust Democrats more than Republicans on the economy for the first time in a decade.
When he launched the war six months ago, Trump set out to wrap it up in a matter of weeks. Now not only does he face the prospect of losing the House, the Senate has also been put in play — as Democrats borrow Trump’s old playbook and rail against foreign wars.
Worsening international conflict
Unless he suddenly ends the war and withdraws quietly, Trump faces two paths for the coming months: ramp up militarily or escalate economically. Both carry enormous peril.
Raising the stakes through the military would likely trigger retaliation by Iran and its proxies throughout the Middle East — sending gasoline prices even higher just weeks before the midterm elections. U.S. allies in the Middle East are already spooked by the shortage of key American weapons they need to defend themselves. Allies in Asia are now worried about the redeployment of military personnel and equipment — which might otherwise watch over China or North Korea — to meet needs in the Middle East.
But escalating the fight economically also carries risks of backfiring. The administration’s Operation Economic Outcast launched this week with vague threats against countries engaging in commerce with Iran. If Trump moves forward, Iran’s top trading partner — China — could retaliate against the U.S. at a time when Trump’s tariff policies are already fraying relationships overseas.
Trump appears to take solace in the fact that Iran’s military has been undermined, the country’s inflation has soared, and Iranian leaders have publicly acknowledged the backlash to an ongoing war. “Iran is completely collapsing,” he wrote this week on social media.
But Iranian officials can see those same strains inside the United States. A negotiated end to the war would offer Trump a political victory before the midterms — giving Tehran little obvious reason to make one easy for him.
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