The hard reality to the imposing of total sanctions on Iranian oil was the fact that there was not enough oil in the global market to replace it. President Donald Trump says he was concerned about rising oil prices and the possibility that a total ban on Iranian oil could cause the global economic damage. While the President told reporters that these are the “toughest sanctions ever imposed” but “we want to go a little bit slower” to avoid causing global oil prices to spike. “I could get the Iran oil down to zero immediately, but it would cause a shock to the market,” the President said.  “I don’t want to lift oil prices. And if you notice, oil prices are going down very substantially, even though already half of their capacity is gone.” The shock to many was that there was not enough oil in the market to replace all the lost Iranian barrels.

The President is right. Prices are going down and he has had a lot to do with that. Not only did he use his influence to get Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members to raise production, he also has been consistent in releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). He also has encouraged U.S. oil production by removing many regulations and allowing the U.S. energy industry to do what they do best. In fact, the massive selloff in oil, that we have seen in large part, can be credited to President Donald Trump. Trump knew that high oil prices going into a Midterm election was not the best thing for Republican’s trying to hang onto the house.

So, instead of rising gasoline prices as voters drove to the poll, we have seen lower prices. Gas Buddy reported that “For the fourth straight week, gas prices have continued to fall: the national average price for a gallon of gasoline is down 7.0 cents per gallon over the last week to $2.73 per gallon, the lowest level in over 200 days, according to GasBuddy data compiled from more than 10 million individual price reports. The national average price of diesel saw modest relief as well, falling 1.4 cents to an average of $3.27 per gallon.”