What did Donald Trump do today?

He started to make desperation moves as oil prices continue to rise.

The price of oil is now substantially higher than it was when Trump launched unprovoked attacks against Iran three weeks ago, and trending steadily upward at the rate of about $2 a day. Worse, for consumers and the long-term economic prospects of the United States, that trend won't be easily reversed even if the situation cools down. Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz can reopen quickly if Iran allows it—and if shippers trust that a peace will actually hold, which is another matter. But many oil wells in the Gulf region have already been shut down, a complicated and costly process that can't be quickly undone. 

Iran's retaliation continues to do serious damage to the oil and gas infrastructure of the region. Iran is also taking heavy damage to its oil and gas facilities, but that only makes the economic consequences worse: even though Iranian oil was under embargo by most of the world, what it could sell lowered the market price.

The result is that record-high oil prices of $150 or even $200 per barrel are now very plausible in the near future. (The average price over the last few years has been more like $65-70.) 

That would mean gasoline prices of $5-7 per gallon in the United States. The economic damage this would do would be considerable, but for Trump, the real threat is to his party's fortunes in the midterm elections.

That is likely why, three weeks into the entirely foreseeable oil crunch arising from his attacks on Iran, Trump is now resorting to short-term emergency measures. Today, he issued a 60-day waiver of the Jones Act, which will allow foreign-flagged ships to move oil and gas between American ports. That will probably lower costs slightly (at the expense of the American shipping industry), but not very much, and not for very long.

Trump is also considering restricting exports of American oil. This would also possibly nudge domestic prices down, but at the cost of introducing chaos into energy markets that would almost certainly cost more money in the long run.

There is one other lever Trump would normally be able to pull in this kind of situation to ease the economic damage he's caused: releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That too would be a stopgap measure, but there's very little oil left in it after Trump abandoned an Inauguration Day promise to refill it last year. 

Why does this matter? 

• Massive disruption to the energy sector was an obvious consequence of this war that Trump somehow managed to be unprepared for. 

• You'd think a president who wanted Americans to be more dependent on fossil fuels would be less careless about endangering the supply of them.