G. Elliott Morris has the data:
The national average price of a gallon of gasoline has surged 33%, from just under $3 to nearly $4, since the U.S. war against Iran started three weeks ago. As of this writing, oil prices are up 50% to over $100 a barrel. The cost of the war is mounting.
It’s not just gas prices. Today, a reader emailed me a link to a website that estimates the total military cost of the war in real time and puts the price tag at roughly $25 billion in 20 days. (I did a quick Google and found no fewer than five of these sites; my theory is that people are using AI to spin them up quickly. Each site has different numbers, but this one extrapolates from the Pentagon’s briefing to Congress.)
And that number is likely an underestimate! University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers points out that the cost of the war, when measured as the impact on the U.S. economy instead of just in military spending, is not just” in the tens of billions, but the hundreds of billions of dollars.
Support for President Donald Trump’s hastily planned war has been historically low from day one. I wrote last week that the public hadn’t rallied behind the president and probably wouldn’t. Trump’s approval has only sunk since then (though his disapproval has also decreased slightly).
[…]
The topline numbers are obviously bad for the administration. But the intensity of opposition is striking. 44% of all adults said the war is a “very bad” use of taxpayer dollars — nearly three times the 15% who said “very good.” Among Democrats, 73% said “very bad” while 9% said good. Among independents, 45% said “very bad”— nearly double the 23% total who said good or very good.
Look at the Republican numbers. It’s not unanimous by any means.
We also asked whether respondents would support the military action if the war caused gas prices to rise by $1 per gallon (we wrote this question two weeks ago, when the price had only risen a quarter) or more. On that question, 61% said they would oppose the action, compared with 30% who said they would support it.
GOP support after the gas prices question dropped from 68% to 61% and opposition ticked up from 24% to 31%. (Subgroup margins of error are larger than the full-sample MOE, so treat these shifts as directional.)
Trump is clearly thinking about sending in ground troops. Don’t be surprised if he does it. After all, he says that no matter what’s happened in his life it always comes out ok. But most Americans aren’t sanguine.