Business Rundown: Growing Pressure At The Pump, But Is Relief On The Way?

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Monday, March 9th, 2026. Surging oil prices and an escalating conflict on Iran are rattling

the markets today. But could there be relief in sight? My fear is it is going to be enough to push

the economy over the edge. For the first time since 2022, oil prices have climbed above $100

of barrel. As the joint US Israeli operation against Iran continues disrupting energy supplies.

Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has grounded to a near halt. President Trump and his

team say the pain is temporary. As world leaders looked to cool fears of a prolonged disruption.

The pressure at the gas pump comes on the heels of a disappointing jobs report last week

and lingering uncertainty over tariffs. So how long will oil prices stay high? And what will that

do to the economy? We don't know what the Trump administration is going to do. We don't know what

Israel is going to do. Those are the things that arguably we have some degree of control over,

but we don't know what Iran is going to do. EJ Antony is the chief economist at the Heritage

Foundation. You'll look previously, when we had these types of conflicts, you would think things

like desalination plants and oil infrastructure were usually considered to just be off limits.

But now with those things being attacked in Iran and Iran responding in kind to Israel and its

other neighbors in the region, now you're in a situation where all bets are off. And so we don't

know how long the US is willing to stay in this fight. And we don't know what the US and Israel

are frankly willing to destroy in the region. And therefore what Iran is willing to destroy as well.

So sadly, I wish I could give you some kind of direction here, but the fog of war is just so

thick and so dark at this point. We don't know which way prices are going to go. It's the extreme

volatility that we've seen. So not only do we not know how high oil is going to get, we don't know

how long it's going to stay up there. Well, I guess if we take he from President Trump, he is

posting to truth social about this and sharing his perspective. Just last night, he says he's

calling this a short term oil price increase. And he says that it's going to drop rapidly once

the Iran nuclear threat is over. Once this mission in Iran is over, I guess pick it up there.

Once this is over with Iran and we don't know to your point in the fog of war, we don't know when

that's going to be. President Trump has said it's going to be a matter of weeks. We will see.

But once it is over, I've always heard that oil prices, they shoot up like a rocket, but they're

going to float down like a feather. Meaning once they go high, it takes a long time for them to

actually settle. So while President Trump could very well be right, this conflict is going to last

a matter of weeks, what does that mean for oil prices, though? Could it take some longer periods

of time to actually bring them back down and settle? Lydia, it's a great, great question. I think

it will take a while for a couple of reasons. One, when you're talking about oil infrastructure,

like refineries, these are not things that you can turn on and off like a light switch. These

are pieces of equipment that literally take weeks to turn off and to start back up again. So if

you want to close a refinery two weeks from today, you need to get the order out now and start

going through emergency procedures to make that happen. So again, trying to decide, can I get a

tanker through the straight of hormones two or three weeks from now, that has implications for

decisions on infrastructure today. Likewise, it's not as if you're going to be able to turn everything

back on immediately. And that again, that was all before this past weekend when we started

bombing oil infrastructures. So now infrastructure is actually getting destroyed, not only in Iran,

but in other countries around the region. And so now it becomes not a matter of weeks,

but months or years even before that oil infrastructure is actually repaired and we can

essentially bring all that capacity back online. Now it's true you do have excess capacity in

other parts of the world, including here in the US, who can do a certain degree make up for those

losses elsewhere, those losses in the Middle East. But again, it's difficult to say here in part

because of the mixed messaging from the administration when we're actually going to see a cessation

of hostilities. They're talking about the nuclear threat from Iran, but Lydia, you and I both

remember last summer when we were told that Iran's nuclear capabilities had been set back decades.

And now they were once again two weeks away from a nuclear bomb. I mean, literally for my entire

adult life, they've been two weeks away from a nuclear bomb. So the problem is even when we hear

messaging from the administration like this is going to end once Iran's nuclear capabilities are

removed, as much as that sounds like a clear objective, it really isn't given the messaging we've

had in the past. So again, the short answer unfortunately is we just don't know.

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I mean, you know, what they're doing in Iran is really important. I think there's a lot to be said

about what the administration would say is progress being made and opportunity to liberate the

people over on, eliminate the threat of nuclear weapon. But there is a short term cost that we're

seeing already here at the gas pump. I'll just say the average cost of a gallon of gas is 347 right

now and across the country just a week ago. It was 299. So talking about what the United States could

do to alleviate some of that. There have been some questioning whether or not we could tap our

strategic petroleum reserve that's an excess reserve that could release additional oil into the

domestic marketplace. Perhaps that could bring some oil down. And then President Trump has also

talked about an insurance program, additional insurance underwriting that would provide safe

passage for oil tankers to the straight of hormones, which of course is incredibly volatile right

now. Oil tankers don't want to go through for the obvious threat there. Do either of those options

seem, you know, seem viable seem like a good option to you. Well, starting with the second one

there, unfortunately, it represents a tremendous risk to taxpayers. Look, if we provide additional

money to the to the reinsurance market essentially in order to try to get these tankers through

the straight of hormones and nothing happens, the ships actually make it through safe and sound.

Well, I guess it's no harm. No foul. But as soon as one of these things gets sunk, it's a tremendous

cost to the American taxpayer. But the other problem, Lydia, is the fact that even if you can get,

you can convince one of these companies, look, we will provide the insurance or reinsurance,

the company still has to agree to risk their ship and to risk the crew. And that's something that

it doesn't seem like a lot of people are willing to do right now because of just simply how volatile

the region and the situation is. Right. But regarding the strategic petroleum reserve, you know,

unfortunately, the Biden administration drained that. And it's not to say they drained it

completely, but it's not where we would like it to be. Right. It's not, it's not where it was

certainly when Biden took office. And that means that it gives us much less of a cushion. The other

problem, Lydia, is that yes, that can help us a bit in terms of the domestic market. But it's not

really going to be able to fully offset what nations like Japan, for example, who are now coming

knocking and trying to buy additional WTI because they get 95% of their oil from the Middle East.

And with that disruption, you're going to have more foreigners coming to the US trying to tap

the US market. This is ultimately right, a global market. It's not as if we can simply keep all the

oil here. And if you try to impose some kind of embargo, you're going to run into the problem of

we need to be exporting certain kinds of crude and importing others simply because of the

the refine the way our refineries here in the US are set up. You know, certain oil, this is one of

the reasons why Iranian crude is so valuable. Certain oil needs to actually be blended with other

types of crude in order to make it refinable in any in any way that's really cost efficient. If you

have the really thick stuff coming out of Venezuela, for example, you want to blend that with

thinner crude that has a lower sulfur content in order to be able to refine it efficiently.

The oil market is much, much more complex, I think, than most people realize. So again,

it's not as easy as just flipping a light switch on and off or opening or closing a faucet here.

Well, I want to connect the dots a little bit. The oil point that we've just made

with some of the other economic data points that we've gotten just, you know, late last week,

we saw a jobs report for February that was disappointing. It showed a loss of roughly 90,000 jobs

for the month of February when the expectation was that we were going to see an increase of 50,000

jobs that prompted a lot of questions about the strength of our labor market. And then we've also

saw, you know, you may have seen that there are some states that are getting together and they

are continuing to challenge President Trump's tariffs. And I bring that up because obviously he

just lost his his emergency powers to impose tariffs. He's replaced them with another plan B,

but now that plan B is being challenged as well. Tariffs love them or hate them. They are

generating revenue for the for the federal government. And so my question is with the

tariff uncertainty, the job market may be weaker and oil price is climbing. What is kind of your

broader assessment of the economic picture right now for the country? Well, the fear Lydia is that

these higher oil prices are going to be not so much the straw that breaks the camel's back.

It's a lot bigger than a straw. Believe me, oil spiking is after all what really popped the

housing bubble if we want to go back, you know, more than a decade. But whatever the case, we are

definitely seeing labor market weakness. We found out with this latest report, not only did the

economy lose jobs last month, but so much of the supposed job growth that we had been seeing over

the last year or two was revised away. In other words, there really was not much labor market growth

at all in 2025. And things certainly have deteriorated. So, you know, in the midst of all this

turmoil, in the midst of all this transition within the labor market and elsewhere, whether you

want to talk AI, whether you want to talk international trade, you name it. Now on top of this, you

are throwing the consequences, throwing in the consequences of this war, namely higher energy

prices. That's going to be very, very damaging. And my fear is it is going to be enough to push

the economy over the edge. I think we really underestimate Lydia just to underscore this point.

How much energy affects the price of everything we do and everything we buy. I was just talking

a couple days ago to a commercial farmer. And he was saying how he can't afford the next round

of fertilizer that's likely going to come in because where do we get synthetic fertilizer today?

A lot of it's made from natural gas. And if you look at natural gas prices in Europe where he's

buying that synthetic fertilizer, they double, double. I mean, that is going to absolutely explode

all kinds of costs throughout the economy. And as fertilizer gets more expensive, food gets

more expensive. Grocery prices are going to go up. Think about all of the plastics, all of the

synthetic clothing fibers, car parts, you name it, all these different things that are made from,

again, oil and natural gas, they're all going to start going up in price. And it's going to make

it feel as if inflation has really, you know, reignited in this country. And this is happening

at a time when we still have millions of Americans living paycheck to paycheck who don't have four or

five hundred dollars as an emergency fund in their checking or savings account. We're still seeing

credit card student loans and other kinds of debt stuck at record highs. This is not a good time

to be essentially raising costs on the economy. Again, the fear, the fear here is Lydia. It pushes us

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I guess, for the Fed to respond to, right? If you have oil prices climbing, that is a big component.

As you said, it's a big inflationary driver or it can be. You could expect to see that showing up

in the CPI. If you have inflation climbing, it makes it difficult for the Fed to respond. If you

also have the labor market weakening as you just walked us through. So, you know, before all,

you know, go back to the start of the year, there have been talks about a new federal reserve chair

in the direction of, you know, monetary policy for the year. Talks about maybe two rate cuts.

And I think the question is, well, what now when you have kind of diverging, diverging trends for

the things that the Fed is supposed to be monitoring, price stability and our, you know, stable prices

and stable employment, how are they going to do that? But as we make that point there, EJ,

I do want to pivot to, I think what is some largely more positive news, which is a really

interesting report that Heritage Foundation is out with. This is the 2026 Heritage Index of Economic

Freedom Report. Coming out just today, and I'm so glad that you're here to talk to us about it,

there's some really important progress that's being made for economic freedom around the world,

particularly in the United States. Walk us through this report. I understand it's not just about

the business environment. This is about individual economic freedom in measuring that. Tell us about

the report. That's exactly right, Lydia. It's a blend of both the freedom that people have as they

run a business, but also people as individuals, as consumers, right? And what we see around the

world is that those areas that are the most free economically tend to perform the best economically.

And that shouldn't surprise anybody, right? If you are allowed to keep more of what you earn,

if you are allowed to have the fruits of your labor, less of that is taken from you by the government,

well now there's a very strong incentive for you to do things like work more to be as efficient

as possible. And the exact same thing goes on the consumption side. The less we see taxation and

regulation, for example, of consumption, the freer people are, and the more they end up consuming

as well. So, sure enough, what we have right now is that the American economy, because of

lower taxation and also big component here. A lot of people don't talk enough about less regulation.

The economy is becoming much, much more free. And so that's a big positive. And I think that's

really been a huge part of the story of the economic growth that we have seen over the last year.

It has been a story of deregulation. And look, we got to give the Trump administration a lot of

credit here, I think, because they have undergone the biggest deregulatory campaign in American history

over the last year, overturning a record number of regulations. These are examples, Lydia Burden,

some overreach by the government, where they don't give us cleaner air or cleaner water, right?

They don't make people's lives substantially better. But what they do do is impose additional

costs. And so they reduce your incentive to go out there and work. They reduce your incentive

to consume. And some of that is simply by limiting the choices you have available to you.

And oftentimes when the government does that, when they reduce your economic freedom so much,

that all of the choices you have are not particularly good choices. People typically go elsewhere,

right? And I don't mean they up and leave the United States, but they just end up leaving that

marketplace entirely. And so by reversing all of those bad public policies, you're reversing their

effects. Again, the regulatory component is a really, really big part of the story that I think

doesn't get enough credit, in part because it's difficult to quantify, Lydia. So often you can

look at taxation and it's very easy to say, look, we reduce the top marginal tax rate by X number

of percentage points. That's a very easy story to tell, right? But when you look at something like

regulation, because regulation kills economic activity, now you're dealing with a counterfactual.

In other words, you're trying to estimate what would have happened had X, Y or Z never been in

place or had it been done differently, whatever the case may be. So again, I think because it's a

little more difficult to quantify, that story doesn't get told as much, but it still is a very,

very important story to tell. And I think the data are bearing out exactly why. You can look at

investment under the Biden administration and see how that growth was seriously curtailed

and eventually went negative on the investment side because of all the, I really just the

amount of regulatory overreach that happened during that administration, which is now thank goodness

being reversed. Well, I think to your point, you know, according to this index released today,

the United States recorded the greatest improvement of all of the nations. Nearly three percentage

points from last year, and that's reversing a decline that it had been tracked under this index,

under the Biden era. So that's a huge improvement, kind of reversing the direction and speaks more

to the reversing policies and deregulation, deregulation priorities of the Trump administration

that you were just explaining there. My question is, you know, if the US is ranked 22nd right now as

the most economically free in the country, how can we make that even higher? Like, what changes do

we need to continue to make or what areas could we continue to work on? I mean, 22nd seems to be

great because there are 176 countries that are ranked here. So we're talking about quite a number

of them for reference here, China ranks 154th. So being 22nd, not too shabby, but how can we make that

even better? Lydia, great, great question. Look, this is America. We never want to settle for second

place, right? We want to be number one. We want our people to be as free as possible because that's

how you become as prosperous as possible. So, how do we, how do we make that happen? You, you

double did things that have made you successful thus far. That means additional tax cuts. That

means additional government deregulation. But look, here's another really, really important

component of this. In order to get that government spending down, excuse me, in order to get the,

I just jumped the horse there. In order to get that government taxation down, you have to get the

government spending down. And that's something that will lead a lot of improvement on that we

have not seen enough of. I understand the Trump administration has made some good progress there,

but they need to do a whole heck of a lot more. And Congress needs to get on board. Another thing that

that we need to see more of is refinement of that tariff strategy that you mentioned earlier.

You know, part of economic freedom is not just the ability to trade domestically, but the ability

to trade internationally as well. And so we want to see, again, additional refinement of that

tariff strategy where we are, we are as much as we can using a scalpel instead of a hacksaw

when it comes to trying to rebalance international trade. EJ Antony, thank you so much for joining us

today. This is a really interesting report. We've got a great article about it on Fox Business.com.

So I hope everyone will go there, check it out, read about it. And I look forward to talking to

you again really soon, EJ. Thank you.

Thank you, Lydia.

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