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... President Donald Trump's team is no longer making predictions about energy prices.
That much was clear Wednesday when administration officials facing lawmakers declined to put a timetable on when the war in Iran would end and the ensuing rise in energy prices would ease, instead offering vague assurances of their track record in lowering prices.
"I think the conflict will end, and I think gasoline prices will come back to where they were, or perhaps lower," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Senate appropriators.
Bessent declined to say Wednesday when the price of gasoline -- now averaging above $4 per gallon, more than a dollar higher than when the war started -- will come down. Instead, he told Senate appropriators that it depended on the length of the war.
"That is path dependent on when the war and the conflict end," he said.
That's a marked shift in rhetoric from previous public appeals asking for reassurance on energy price spikes two months after Trump launched the strikes in the Middle East and Iran retaliated by attacking oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, choking off nearly 20 percent of the world's oil supply and straining the global economy. Trump himself originally said the war, now nearing its second month, would last "four to five weeks."
Energy Secretary Chris Wright, also appearing at a hearing Wednesday, walked back a comment he made over the weekend that U.S. gasoline prices could stay above $3 per gallon until next year -- a suggestion Trump publicly refuted. ...
