United States | News & Politics

9071 readers

272 users here now

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

pangyuehung@lemmy.ml

yogthos@lemmy.ml

Spiking gas prices tied to Iran war are set to eat up tax refunds touted by Trump (apnews.com)

submitted 1 day ago by FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world to c/usa@lemmy.ml

13 comments fedilink hide all child comments

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. economy was supposed to start the year with a bang, fueled by an unusually large jump in tax refunds from President Donald Trump’s tax cut legislation. Yet spiking gas prices are on track to eat up those refunds, leaving most Americans with little extra to spend.

“Next spring is projected to be the largest tax refund season of all time,” Trump said in a prime-time speech in December that was intended to address voters’ concerns about the economy and stubbornly high prices.

But that was before the Iran war, which began Feb. 28. Oil and gas prices have soared since then, with the nationwide average price of gas reaching $3.94 Sunday, up more than a dollar from just a month earlier.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml 1 points 19 hours ago

That makes more sense - I was thinking you meant they absorbed all the costs, and that definitely wasn't true.

I can see the shape of their plan - absorb costs for a while and slowly offload the costs they were absorbing onto consumers, so if by August they were absorbing 51% and then maybe by May it'd be 25% and then by next August it'd be almost nothing. They wouldn't want to spook customers with an immediate price spike, after all.