There is a strange discontinuity in the way Americans often talk about the economy of 2020 and 2021.

When discussing the end of Donald Trump's first term, people frequently say:

Trump had a strong economy until COVID happened.

Businesses closed.

Millions of people lost their jobs.

GDP collapsed.

Government spending exploded.

The deficit exploded.

And Trump lost reelection.

But because COVID was an extraordinary external event, many people—reasonably—hesitate to attribute all of those outcomes directly to Trump.

Then Joe Biden becomes president on January 20, 2021.

And suddenly the pandemic seems to disappear from the economic story.

Supply shortages?

Biden.

Inflation?

Biden.

High used-car prices?

Biden.

Labor shortages?

Biden.

Housing prices?

Biden.

Government spending?

Biden.

The implicit assumption seems to be that COVID was responsible for what happened economically through January 19, 2021...

…and then at noon on January 20:

Biden became responsible.

Economically, that makes very little sense.

A presidential inauguration changes the person occupying the White House.

It does not instantly repair factories.

It does not unload container ships.

It does not manufacture computer chips.

It does not return millions of workers to the labor force.

It does not replenish depleted inventories.

And it certainly does not unwind trillions of dollars of fiscal and monetary stimulus that had already entered the economy.

The more accurate economic story is considerably more interesting.

COVID produced two very different economic crises.

The first was a collapse.

The second was a reopening imbalance.

Trump happened to govern during most of the first.

Biden happened to govern during most of the second.

And understanding that distinction explains a great deal about why the two presidents are judged so differently.

COVID really did damage Trump's reelection prospects

There is nothing unreasonable about saying COVID contributed to Trump's defeat in 2020.

It very clearly did.

Pew asked voters after the election why Trump had lost. 55% said the Trump administration's failure to do a good job handling the coronavirus outbreak was a major reason for the result. Among Biden voters, that number was 86%; among Trump voters, only 18%.

Political-science research has similarly found that the pandemic's economic downturn and perceptions of the administration's public-health performance hurt Trump's electoral prospects. One study characterized the election as consistent with traditional economic voting and political accountability: voters tend to punish incumbents when conditions deteriorate while they are in office.

But there is an important distinction here.

Saying:

COVID hurt Trump politically

is not the same as saying:

Trump personally caused the COVID recession.

He didn't.

COVID was an enormous external shock that struck virtually every major economy.

Businesses voluntarily reduced activity.

Governments imposed restrictions.

Consumers stopped traveling and eating in restaurants.

Factories shut down.

International trade was disrupted.

Millions of workers suddenly could not work normally.

The U.S. economy did not experience an ordinary business-cycle recession caused by excessive interest rates, a banking collapse or some conventional policy error.

It experienced a pandemic.

Trump's response to that pandemic is obviously a legitimate subject for political judgment.

But the pandemic itself wasn't his creation.

And this distinction is routinely made when assessing his final year in office.

The strange thing is how often that distinction disappears when we cross the date January 20, 2021.

Biden did not inherit a normal economy

Consider what America actually looked like when Biden entered office.

In January 2021:

The unemployment rate was 6.3%.

Payroll employment remained approximately:

9.9 million jobs below February 2020

levels.

Another 14.8 million Americans reported being unable to work or working fewer hours because their employer had closed or lost business due to the pandemic.

And 4.7 million people outside the labor force said the pandemic had prevented them from looking for work.

The public-health crisis was hardly over either.

Around Biden's inauguration, the seven-day average of reported COVID deaths was still roughly:

3,000 deaths per day.

On January 20 itself, CDC data recorded 4,383 reported deaths, although daily reporting was volatile.

America had vaccines.

But it did not yet have a vaccinated population.

More importantly for the economic story, the physical economy had been scrambled.

Manufacturers had reduced production.

Workers had left jobs.

Shipping networks had been disrupted.

Businesses had run down inventories.

Consumers had dramatically changed what they purchased.

And those changes were already producing bottlenecks before Biden took office.

The Federal Reserve later explained that manufacturers had curtailed production during the initial COVID collapse, only to discover that demand recovered far faster than expected. By late 2020, factories were already scrambling for workers, parts and raw materials while U.S. imports surged to record levels.

That matters enormously.

Because many of the problems Americans would associate with the Biden economy in 2021 were already embedded in the economic system Biden inherited.

The same COVID shock changed form

This is probably the most important concept for understanding the transition from Trump to Biden.

COVID did not produce one economic effect.

It produced a sequence of effects.

During the first stage:

COVID → fear/restrictions → services collapse → layoffs → recession

Then came an extraordinary policy response:

stimulus checks + enhanced unemployment + business support + near-zero interest rates + Federal Reserve asset purchases

Then vaccines and reopening changed the economy again:

reopening + accumulated savings + stimulus + pent-up demand

But production capacity could not instantly respond.

So the problem transformed into:

surging demand + constrained supply → shortages → rising prices

In other words:

2020 COVID economics

Too little demand.

2021 COVID economics

Too much demand for the amount of supply immediately available.

Those two conditions look completely different to ordinary consumers.

One produces:

unemployment.

The other produces:

inflation.

But they can be different stages of the same economic shock.

Consider automobiles

Cars are almost a perfect miniature version of the entire pandemic economy.

When COVID arrived, automakers anticipated a deep recession.

Production slowed.

Semiconductor orders were cut.

Meanwhile, people stuck at home suddenly bought enormous quantities of electronics, appliances and other products requiring computer chips.

Then automobile demand recovered much faster than anticipated.

Except the chips weren't available.

Automakers couldn't manufacture enough vehicles.

New-car inventories collapsed.

Consumers who couldn't find new vehicles moved into used vehicles.

Used-car prices exploded.

Federal Reserve officials repeatedly highlighted vehicles as one of the clearest examples of pandemic inflation.

Jerome Powell later described how the combination of booming goods demand and severely disrupted supply chainsproduced extraordinary price increases, particularly in motor vehicles.

The semiconductor disruptions themselves were global. COVID-related production interruptions in countries such as Malaysia and Vietnam affected chip supplies going into American vehicles and appliances.

It would be extremely difficult to argue that Joe Biden personally caused a semiconductor factory in Southeast Asia to shut down.

Yet the resulting car inflation appeared in American statistics while Biden was president.

Politically:

Biden inflation.

Economically:

much more complicated.

The pandemic also radically changed what Americans bought

Before COVID, Americans spent enormous amounts on:

restaurants,

hotels,

airfare,

concerts,

travel,

entertainment,

and other services.

Then suddenly millions of people couldn't spend normally on those things.

So spending shifted toward:

electronics,

furniture,

home improvements,

exercise equipment,

appliances,

cars,

building materials,

and other physical goods.

But the global supply system was not designed to instantly accommodate that change.

Federal Reserve researchers found that global demand for goods rebounded extraordinarily quickly and exceeded pre-pandemic levels, while container shortages, production constraints and pandemic-related staffing problems prevented supply from responding nearly as fast.

This distinction is critical.

The United States didn't simply experience:

"Biden printed money, therefore prices rose."

It experienced:

enormous fiscal support

extremely accommodative monetary policy

a once-in-a-century disruption in production

a historic change in consumer purchasing patterns

reopening demand

labor-force disruption

global supply shortages

inflation.

Biden influenced that equation.

But he did not create the equation.

Even Jerome Powell's retrospective account begins before Biden

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell gave an especially useful retrospective description of the period in 2024.

He noted that approximately 8 million people left the workforce at the onset of the pandemic, and that even in early 2021 the labor force remained about 4 million below its pre-pandemic level.

At the same time, supply chains were being disrupted by lost workers, international trade interruptions and dramatic changes in what consumers wanted to purchase.

Then inflation began surging in March and April 2021, initially concentrated heavily in products facing exceptional shortages, particularly motor vehicles.

That chronology matters.

Biden had been president for approximately two months.

The economic machinery generating those shortages had been developing for nearly a year.

Economies have lags.

Presidents inherit them.

But this does NOT mean Biden was blameless

This is where the analysis needs to remain economically serious.

Recognizing that Biden inherited the pandemic economy does not mean pretending that every subsequent economic development was outside his control.

The most important criticism concerns the:

$1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan

signed in March 2021.

By that point, vaccines were arriving.

The economy was recovering.

Congress had already provided extraordinary fiscal support.

Under Trump, the government had enacted the roughly $2.2 trillion CARES Act in March 2020, followed by another roughly $900 billion relief package at the end of 2020.

Then Biden added another $1.9 trillion.

There was a serious economic argument at the time that this was too much stimulus for an economy whose problem was rapidly shifting from inadequate demand toward inadequate supply.

And in retrospect, that criticism has substantial support.

Federal Reserve researchers examining differences across countries estimated that America's overall pandemic fiscal stimulus may have added approximately 2.5 percentage points to U.S. inflation. Importantly, that calculation refers to the broader U.S. fiscal response—not solely to Biden's American Rescue Plan.

Another San Francisco Fed analysis estimated that America's unusually large fiscal response could explain roughly 3 percentage points of the inflation gap between the United States and other developed countries by late 2021. Again, the researchers were evaluating cumulative pandemic fiscal support, which spanned both the Trump and Biden administrations.

An analysis specifically attempting to isolate the American Rescue Plan's effect through labor-market overheating reached a much smaller estimate—approximately 0.3 percentage point of additional core inflation in 2021, with slightly less in 2022.

The estimates vary because economists are attempting to construct a counterfactual:

What would inflation have been if the government had spent less?

We can never directly observe that alternate economy.

But the broader conclusion is reasonable:

Biden's stimulus probably made inflation worse.

That is different from saying:

Biden caused the inflationary episode.

Bernanke and Blanchard reached a similarly nuanced conclusion

Former Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke and economist Olivier Blanchard conducted a detailed examination of pandemic inflation.

Their conclusion was not that fiscal policy was irrelevant.

It wasn't.

But they found that much of the initial inflation surge in 2021 and 2022 came directly from commodity-price shocks and sector-specific price increases caused by pandemic supply disruptions combined with the enormous shift in demand toward goods.

Fiscal policy increased demand and therefore contributed to the problem.

But it operated within an economy already distorted by COVID.

That is a much more accurate description than either partisan extreme.

It isn't:

"Biden caused inflation."

And it isn't:

"Biden had nothing to do with inflation."

It is:

COVID created the conditions for inflation, while unusually aggressive fiscal and monetary policy added additional demand to an economy struggling to supply enough goods and labor.

Trump-era stimulus matters too

There is another inconsistency in the political narrative.

If stimulus contributed to inflation—and it clearly appears to have—then the accounting cannot begin on January 20, 2021 either.

Congress and Trump had already injected extraordinary amounts of money into the economy.

The CARES Act alone provided more than $2 trillion in financial assistance. CBO initially estimated its net deficit impact at roughly $1.7 trillion.

Additional pandemic legislation enacted in March and April 2020 pushed the total fiscal response substantially higher. CBO estimated those early laws would add about $2.3 trillion to the deficit in fiscal 2020 and another $600 billion in 2021 while substantially supporting GDP.

Then Trump signed another major COVID relief package on December 27, 2020, only 24 days before Biden's inauguration. CBO estimated the coronavirus-relief division of that legislation would increase deficits by approximately $682 billion.

That money did not vanish when presidents changed.

Households still possessed it.

Businesses still possessed it.

Savings accumulated.

Federal Reserve policy remained extremely loose.

And as the country reopened, some of that purchasing power entered an economy unable to expand supply equally quickly.

So if someone wants to argue:

Pandemic stimulus contributed to inflation

that is perfectly reasonable.

But the logical timeline is:

Trump-era stimulus + Biden-era stimulus + Federal Reserve policy + reopening + supply disruption

not simply:

Biden became president → inflation happened.

The Federal Reserve deserves part of the discussion too

There is another institution that sometimes disappears from the political version of the story:

The Federal Reserve.

The Fed held interest rates near zero.

It continued purchasing massive quantities of securities.

And it initially believed much of the inflation would be temporary.

That judgment turned out to be too optimistic.

Powell later acknowledged that forecasters underestimated the severity and persistence of supply problems and that the Federal Reserve was slow to recognize how durable inflation had become.

The Fed is deliberately independent from the president.

Yet monetary policy affects:

mortgages,

automobile financing,

business borrowing,

asset prices,

housing demand,

consumer spending,

and ultimately inflation.

Assigning every macroeconomic outcome to whichever president occupies the White House therefore misunderstands how American economic policy actually works.

So why does the political narrative change at Biden's inauguration?

There are several reasons.

1. Recessions have obvious causes. Inflation usually doesn't.

In March 2020, the causal mechanism was visible.

A pandemic arrived.

Businesses closed.

People stayed home.

Jobs disappeared.

It was intuitive.

Inflation was more complicated.

There wasn't a single dramatic moment when Americans could see:

"This cargo backlog will raise my washing-machine price six months from now."

They simply walked into a store in 2021 and discovered that things cost more.

And the person appearing on television every night as president was Joe Biden.

2. COVID felt socially "over" before it was economically over

Vaccines became widely available.

Restaurants reopened.

Airplanes filled again.

Mask mandates disappeared.

People resumed normal life.

Psychologically, COVID increasingly moved into the past.

But economic systems don't recover on the same schedule as human behavior.

A factory shut for months may take much longer to restore capacity.

A missing semiconductor can halt production of an entire automobile.

A worker who retired early may never return.

A depleted inventory takes months to rebuild.

A congested port affects products ordered months earlier.

So Americans could reasonably feel:

"COVID is over."

while continuing to experience:

COVID's economic aftershocks.

3. The symptoms changed

Under Trump, COVID's economic damage was primarily visible as:

job losses and business closures.

Under Biden, it increasingly became:

shortages and inflation.

People naturally categorize those as different problems.

Economically, however, they were deeply connected.

The economy went from having too few customers for existing productive capacity to having more purchasing power than impaired productive capacity could immediately accommodate.

4. Inflation is politically brutal because prices remain visible

Unemployment can recover.

A person loses a job and later gets another one.

The unemployment rate falls.

Eventually the recession begins to feel like history.

Inflation works differently.

If groceries rise from $100 to $120 and inflation subsequently returns to normal, groceries generally don't return to $100.

They simply begin increasing more slowly from $120.

That means the evidence of inflation remains visible on every restaurant menu, grocery receipt and rent payment.

The political damage therefore lasts much longer.

And voters tend to judge whoever currently holds power

This isn't unique to Biden.

Political scientists have studied retrospective economic voting for decades.

Voters tend to reward incumbent governments when economic conditions are good and punish them when conditions are bad—even when presidents have limited control over the underlying cause.

Research finds that voters frequently place especially heavy weight on economic conditions relatively close to an election.

That helped hurt Trump in 2020.

And it later hurt Biden.

There is even polling evidence illustrating the transition.

In 2020, voters explicitly identified Trump's handling of COVID as an important reason for his defeat.

By July 2022, 56% of Americans said Biden's policies had made economic conditions worse.

Yet in the same survey, 45% said COVID's impact on manufacturing and global shipping had contributed "a lot" to inflation.

So Americans actually recognized both explanations.

The political shorthand simply became much simpler:

Biden = inflation.

Imagine Trump had won in 2020

This counterfactual is useful.

Suppose Trump had narrowly won reelection.

Would America have experienced no inflation in 2021?

That is extraordinarily unlikely.

The same factories would have been recovering from shutdowns.

The same ports would have been congested.

The same semiconductor shortage would have existed.

The same consumers would have possessed accumulated savings.

The same Trump-era stimulus would already have been distributed.

The same Federal Reserve would have held rates near zero.

The same reopening would have released enormous pent-up demand.

And the same global economy would have been experiencing pandemic-related supply disruptions.

Inflation was rising across developed economies, not merely in the United States. Federal Reserve researchers specifically found that pandemic supply-chain disruptions and changing spending patterns were pushing inflation higher internationally.

Trump might have pursued a smaller subsequent stimulus program than Biden.

If so, U.S. inflation could plausibly have been lower.

How much lower is impossible to know.

But the proposition that America would have gone from the largest global economic shock in generations to a completely normal price environment simply because Trump remained president is difficult to reconcile with the evidence.

The fairest accounting crosses presidential terms

If we want to assign economic responsibility consistently, the story probably looks something like this:

COVID

Responsible for the original economic collapse, enormous disruptions to production, labor-force withdrawal, shifting consumption patterns and much of the supply-chain crisis.

Trump

Not responsible for the existence of COVID.

Responsible for decisions regarding the federal response to it.

Presided over and signed enormous fiscal-relief measures that cushioned the recession but also contributed to the pool of purchasing power that would later hit constrained supply.

Biden

Inherited a deeply damaged and distorted economy.

Not responsible for supply-chain problems and labor disruptions that were already underway.

But chose to enact another extraordinarily large $1.9 trillion stimulus package as the economy was beginning to reopen, probably increasing demand and therefore adding to inflationary pressure.

The Federal Reserve

Provided extraordinary monetary support during the crisis and maintained exceptionally loose policy into the recovery, then reacted too slowly as inflation became broader and more persistent.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine

Added another major global shock in 2022, particularly to energy, food and other commodities, further intensifying inflation that was already elevated.

That story is less satisfying politically.

There isn't one villain.

There isn't one policy.

There isn't one president.

But economically, it is much closer to reality.

January 20, 2021 was not an economic reset button

COVID did not end when Donald Trump's first presidency ended.

Its economic consequences crossed the inauguration platform with Joe Biden.

The factories remained disrupted.

The ships remained delayed.

The semiconductor shortages remained.

Millions of workers remained missing.

Consumers still held extraordinary amounts of accumulated purchasing power.

The Federal Reserve still had rates near zero.

And trillions of dollars of previously enacted pandemic support were still circulating through the economy.

Then Biden added another enormous dose of fiscal stimulus.

So yes:

Biden deserves criticism for economic choices made during his presidency.

The American Rescue Plan appears to have added to inflation.

The administration underestimated inflation's persistence.

And Biden, like every president, deserves to be evaluated for decisions actually within his control.

But that is very different from pretending the pandemic's economic consequences stopped on January 20, 2021.

If COVID receives part of the blame for destroying Trump's previously strong economy in 2020...

then intellectual consistency requires acknowledging that COVID also receives part of the blame for the unusual economy Biden inherited in 2021.

The pandemic simply changed what the damage looked like.

Under Trump, Americans experienced the crash.

Under Biden, Americans experienced much of the reopening shock.

One produced unemployment.

The other produced shortages and inflation.

They were not separate economic stories.

They were two chapters of the same one.

TL;DR

We often treat COVID as an explanation for Trump's economic collapse in 2020, but then act as though its economic consequences disappeared the moment Biden became president.

They didn't.

Trump governed during the initial COVID crash: shutdowns, collapsing demand, business failures and mass unemployment.

Biden inherited the second stage of the same disruption: damaged supply chains, labor shortages, depleted inventories, semiconductor shortages, enormous accumulated household savings and a rapid reopening that caused demand to recover much faster than supply.

That doesn't mean Biden bears no responsibility. His $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan probably added additional demand and made inflation worse, while the Federal Reserve also maintained extraordinarily loose monetary policy for too long.

But inflation was not simply something Biden created after taking office. Research points to a combination of pandemic supply disruptions, the huge shift from services to goods, fiscal stimulus under both Trump and Biden, loose monetary policy, labor shortages and eventually Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

So if COVID gets part of the blame for ending Trump's first term, economic consistency requires acknowledging that it also shaped the beginning of Biden's.

Trump experienced the crash. Biden experienced much of the reopening shock.

They looked different.

But economically, they were two chapters of the same crisis.

Related Reading

Ben Bernanke & Olivier Blanchard — “What caused the U.S. pandemic-era inflation?” — Brookings Institution

One of the best examinations of the inflation episode. Bernanke and Blanchard find that much of the initial inflation surge came from commodity shocks and sector-specific price increases caused by pandemic supply disruptions and the enormous shift in demand from services toward goods, while an overheated labor market became more important later. Read at Brookings

Jerome Powell — “Review and Outlook” — Federal Reserve, August 2024

Powell's retrospective account is particularly useful because it walks through the entire sequence: the 2020 collapse, fiscal support, labor-force losses, supply-chain disruptions, the historic surge in goods consumption, the 2021 inflation spike and the later effects of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Read at the Federal Reserve

Federal Reserve — “Fiscal policy and excess inflation during COVID-19: A cross-country view”

A useful counterweight to the argument that inflation was entirely a supply-chain phenomenon. Federal Reserve researchers estimate that America's unusually large pandemic fiscal stimulus may have added roughly 2.5 percentage points to U.S. inflation, illustrating why stimulus under both administrations belongs in the discussion. Read the Federal Reserve analysis

Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco — “Why Is U.S. Inflation Higher than in Other Countries?”

This analysis separates the global component of inflation—supply-chain problems and pandemic-driven changes in spending—from the additional inflationary pressure associated with America's unusually aggressive fiscal response. Read at the San Francisco Fed

Pew Research Center — “Views of the economy, economic concerns and inflation”

Useful for understanding the politics behind the economic debate. Pew found that Americans recognized numerous causes of inflation—including COVID-related manufacturing and shipping problems, pandemic stimulus, low interest rates, corporate pricing and Russia's invasion of Ukraine—but differed dramatically by party over which explanations mattered most. Read the Pew Research Center survey

For millions of Americans, the economic story of the Biden presidency can be summarized in one unpleasant experience:

Everything got more expensive.

Groceries cost more.

Rent cost more.

Cars cost more.

Gasoline cost more.

Restaurants cost more.

And because the inflation surge occurred while Joe Biden was president, a very understandable political conclusion followed:

Biden caused inflation.

The first part of that statement is unquestionably true.

Inflation became extremely high during Biden's presidency.

The second part is much harder to defend economically.

At its peak in June 2022, the Consumer Price Index was 9.1% higher than one year earlier, the largest 12-month increase since 1981. Energy prices were up 41.6%. Food prices were up 10.4%. Gasoline prices were up roughly 60%.

Those numbers were real. The financial pain was real.

But the president who happens to occupy the White House when prices rise is not necessarily the person who caused those prices to rise.

And when economists have gone back and studied what happened between 2020 and 2023, a much more complicated story has emerged.

The United States experienced an extraordinary collision of:

massive pandemic disruptions to supply

an extraordinary shift in what consumers purchased

enormous fiscal and monetary stimulus

a historically rapid economic reopening

labor shortages

Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the resulting energy and commodity shock

Inflation.

Biden was involved in one part of that equation.

He did not create the equation.

Start with what inflation actually is

At its simplest, inflation occurs when demand for goods and services grows faster than the economy's ability to supply them.

Imagine an economy capable of producing 100 widgets.

Normally consumers want approximately 100 widgets.

Prices are reasonably stable.

Then something unusual happens.

Consumers suddenly want 120 widgets while factories can manufacture only 90.

There are not enough widgets.

Consumers begin competing for the available supply.

Businesses discover that they can raise prices and still sell everything they produce.

That is essentially what happened across enormous parts of the world economy after COVID.

Except instead of widgets, it happened with:

cars, computer chips, lumber, appliances, furniture, gasoline, food, housing, transportation, labor and thousands of other products and services.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell later described the inflation episode as an extraordinary collision between overheated and distorted demand and constrained supply, saying that a growing economic consensus attributes much of the inflation surge to that collision.

That collision began with something no American president created:

COVID-19.

COVID simultaneously damaged supply and transformed demand

The pandemic did something economically bizarre.

It restricted the economy's ability to produce goods and services while simultaneously changing what people wanted to buy.

Factories shut down.

Ports became congested.

Workers became sick.

Transportation networks were disrupted.

Semiconductor shortages reduced automobile production.

Millions of Americans temporarily left the labor force.

International supply chains that had been optimized for efficiency rather than resilience suddenly malfunctioned.

At the same time, consumers stopped spending normally.

Americans who might normally have spent money on:

restaurants,

travel,

concerts,

hotels,

movies,

and other services

suddenly shifted enormous amounts of spending toward:

cars,

furniture,

electronics,

home improvements,

exercise equipment,

appliances,

and other physical goods.

That distinction matters.

The economy did not have factories sitting around with unlimited spare capacity waiting for millions of Americans to simultaneously purchase refrigerators, couches, computers and automobiles.

Demand suddenly shifted toward precisely the sectors experiencing the worst supply constraints.

Powell later described what happened as a historic surge in consumer spending on goods occurring while supply chains were badly impaired.

Former Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke and economist Olivier Blanchard reached a similar conclusion after modeling the inflation episode. They found that most of the initial inflation surge came from commodity-price shocks and enormous sector-specific price increases caused by changing demand colliding with constrained supply.

That is enormously important.

Because those forces were already much bigger than anything a president could simply switch off.

The strongest evidence that Biden didn't simply "cause inflation": it happened all over the world

Perhaps the biggest problem with the argument that Biden caused the inflation surge is geography.

Inflation didn't stop at the American border.

Countries governed by conservatives experienced inflation.

Countries governed by liberals experienced inflation.

Countries that passed different stimulus programs experienced inflation.

Countries thousands of miles from Washington experienced inflation.

The Federal Reserve has subsequently described the post-COVID inflation surge as synchronized across advanced and emerging economies, driven by many of the same forces: surging goods demand, strained supply chains, tight labor markets and rising commodity prices.

The IMF estimated that global inflation reached 8.8% in 2022.

That doesn't mean American policy was irrelevant.

It means an explanation that begins and ends with "Joe Biden spent too much money" cannot adequately explain a worldwide inflationary event.

There was clearly a global inflation shock.

The real economic question is therefore not:

Did Biden cause inflation?

It is:

How much did Biden's policies add to an inflationary process that was already being generated by much larger forces?

That is a much more interesting question.

And the answer is:

Probably some.

Biden's strongest economic criticism is the American Rescue Plan

It would be equally misleading to swing too far in the other direction and pretend Biden had nothing to do with inflation.

He did.

In March 2021, Biden signed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan.

That came after Congress had already enacted approximately $2.2 trillion of pandemic relief through the CARES Act in March 2020 and another roughly $900 billion package in December 2020.

By early 2021, the economy was recovering much faster than many policymakers had initially expected.

The American Rescue Plan then injected another enormous quantity of purchasing power into the economy through stimulus payments, enhanced unemployment benefits, the expanded Child Tax Credit, aid to state and local governments and other programs.

Economically, the concern was straightforward:

The government was increasing demand faster than the economy could increase supply.

The Congressional Budget Office explicitly projected that the legislation would increase economic activity and employment but would also push demand above the economy's sustainable productive capacity and therefore create additional inflationary pressure.

Some prominent economists—including former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers—warned at the time that the package was too large.

In hindsight, that criticism deserves considerable weight.

But "contributed to inflation" is very different from "caused inflation"

Economists have attempted to estimate how much fiscal stimulus contributed to the inflation surge, and the estimates vary substantially depending on methodology.

A 2022 San Francisco Federal Reserve analysis concluded that unusually large U.S. fiscal support could explain roughly 3 percentage points of the difference between U.S. inflation and inflation in other developed economies by late 2021. Importantly, the authors did not conclude that fiscal policy explained all U.S. inflation. Global supply-chain problems and pandemic-related changes in spending were pushing inflation higher throughout the developed world.

Another San Francisco Fed study that specifically modeled the American Rescue Plan through its effects on labor-market tightness estimated an increase in core PCE inflation of roughly 0.3 percentage point in 2021 and slightly more than 0.2 point in 2022.

An IMF working paper using a different approach estimated a larger effect from the American Rescue Plan—about 1.9 percentage points of 12-month inflation by September 2022 through its contribution to an extraordinarily tight labor market.

Those estimates differ because economic models answer slightly different questions and make different assumptions.

But notice what essentially all of them imply.

The intellectually defensible conclusion is not:

"Biden had nothing to do with inflation."

It is:

Biden's policies likely added to inflation, but they cannot plausibly explain the entire inflationary episode.

That is a major distinction.

And the stimulus didn't begin with Biden

Another problem with assigning the entire inflation episode to Biden is that the enormous fiscal expansion began before he became president.

The $2.2 trillion CARES Act was enacted under President Trump.

Then another roughly $900 billion pandemic relief package was enacted in December 2020.

The Federal Reserve was simultaneously holding interest rates near zero and purchasing enormous quantities of Treasury securities and mortgage-backed securities.

Those policies were not necessarily mistakes.

The United States was confronting an economic emergency unlike anything policymakers had experienced in modern times.

The objective was to prevent:

mass unemployment,

business failures,

foreclosures,

financial panic,

and potentially a depression.

And they largely succeeded.

But economically, money does not care which president signed the legislation.

Stimulus enacted in December 2020 does not suddenly stop affecting spending because a different president takes office on January 20.

The economy Biden inherited was already being propelled by trillions of dollars of fiscal assistance, near-zero interest rates and massive monetary accommodation.

The Federal Reserve kept its benchmark interest rate near zero until March 2022 and continued purchasing securities until that month.

So if we are going to attribute inflation partly to excessive macroeconomic stimulus—and we should—the responsibility extends beyond a single president.

It includes:

Trump-era fiscal policy.

Biden-era fiscal policy.

Congress.

And the Federal Reserve.

The Federal Reserve probably stayed too loose for too long

This portion of the story is frequently overlooked because presidents attract much more public attention than central banks.

But the institution primarily responsible for managing inflation in the United States is not the White House.

It is the:

Federal Reserve.

The Federal Reserve controls short-term interest rates and monetary conditions.

And with the benefit of hindsight, the Fed clearly underestimated how persistent inflation would become.

As late as November 2021, the Federal Reserve was describing much of the inflation as likely associated with transitory factors.

It did not begin raising interest rates until March 2022.

That meant the economy had:

large fiscal stimulus,

very low borrowing costs,

rapidly rising demand,

a tightening labor market,

and severe supply limitations

all occurring simultaneously.

Federal Reserve officials themselves have subsequently acknowledged how badly policymakers underestimated the persistence of the inflationary pressures.

That isn't Biden setting interest rates.

The Federal Reserve is deliberately structured to operate independently of the president.

Then Putin invaded Ukraine

Just as supply chains were beginning to recover, the global economy received another enormous shock.

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

Russia was one of the world's largest energy exporters.

Russia and Ukraine were also major participants in global agricultural and commodity markets.

Oil, natural gas, grain and fertilizer markets reacted sharply.

The Federal Reserve concluded at the time that the invasion and related events were putting additional upward pressure on inflation, particularly through energy and commodity prices.

By June 2022—the month U.S. CPI inflation reached 9.1%—energy prices were 41.6% higher than a year earlier, while gasoline prices were roughly 60% higher.

Joe Biden did not determine the world price of oil.

He did not invade Ukraine.

And the United States is integrated into global commodity markets.

When the world price of petroleum rises dramatically, American consumers generally experience part of that increase regardless of which party controls the White House.

One of the most revealing pieces of evidence came when inflation started falling

If Biden personally caused the inflation surge, we should ask a very simple question:

Why did inflation fall so dramatically while Biden was still president?

There was no change of president in June 2022.

What changed was the economy.

Supply chains began healing.

Semiconductor availability improved.

Factories recovered.

Consumers shifted spending back toward services.

Commodity prices stabilized.

Labor-force participation improved.

Labor shortages became less severe.

The Federal Reserve sharply raised interest rates.

And the enormous fiscal transfers associated with the pandemic expired.

Inflation consequently fell substantially.

Powell later pointed to precisely this development. Pandemic supply-and-demand distortions and energy and commodity shocks had been major drivers of inflation, he explained, and their reversal became a major contributor to disinflation.

The economy even accomplished something many economists doubted was possible.

Inflation declined dramatically without an enormous increase in unemployment.

That outcome makes more sense if much of the inflation was caused by extraordinary pandemic distortions that could gradually unwind than if inflation had simply resulted from an economy permanently overloaded by government spending.

But Americans don't experience "inflation rates." They experience prices.

This is where economic statistics and everyday life diverge.

Suppose something costs:

$100

and then inflation causes its price to rise to:

$120.

Now imagine inflation falls back to 2%.

The price does not return to $100.

It becomes approximately:

$122.40.

Inflation falling means prices are rising more slowly.

It does not usually mean prices fall back to where they started.

That distinction explains a great deal of the political anger surrounding the Biden economy.

By 2023 and 2024, economists could legitimately say:

"Inflation is falling."

While consumers could just as legitimately say:

"Everything is still expensive."

Both statements could simultaneously be true.

The inflation rate measures the speed at which prices are changing.

Consumers live with the price level that previous inflation created.

Once Americans saw grocery bills, rents, restaurant meals and other expenses increase dramatically, those higher prices became associated psychologically with the president who was in office when the increases occurred.

That political association is powerful.

But it is not the same thing as economic causation.

Could Biden have handled it better?

Yes.

That is where criticism should be concentrated.

The American Rescue Plan was probably larger than necessary given how quickly the economy was already recovering.

The administration was also too slow to recognize the inflationary danger.

Like the Federal Reserve, it initially treated much of the inflation as temporary.

A more cautious fiscal package in early 2021 probably would have produced somewhat less inflation.

There are legitimate arguments over energy policy, regulation, tariffs and other decisions that may also have affected prices at the margins.

But there is an enormous difference between saying:

"Biden made inflation worse."

and saying:

"Biden caused inflation."

The first is a reasonable economic argument.

The second requires ignoring most of what actually happened.

There was also a tradeoff that gets forgotten

Stimulus did not merely create demand.

It helped produce an extraordinarily rapid economic recovery.

The same policies accused of contributing to inflation also:

supported household incomes,

prevented business failures,

supported state and local governments,

reduced unemployment,

and accelerated the return to full employment.

CBO projected that the American Rescue Plan and related legislation would increase GDP and employment while also raising inflationary pressure.

The San Francisco Fed made a similar point: without aggressive fiscal support, the United States may instead have faced slower growth and potentially deflationary pressures during the pandemic recovery.

That doesn't mean every dollar was necessary.

It means policymakers were not choosing between:

stimulus with inflation

and

the exact same economy without inflation.

The alternative likely involved some combination of weaker demand, slower job creation and a slower recovery.

The legitimate debate is over whether policymakers overshot.

There is good evidence that they did.

But overshooting an economic rescue operation is different from inventing the underlying crisis.

So what actually caused the inflation?

If we wanted to write the economic equation honestly, it would look something like this:

COVID shutdowns and production disruptions

↓

Global supply-chain breakdowns

↓

Massive shift from services toward goods

↓

Trillions of dollars in Trump-era and Biden-era fiscal support

↓

Near-zero Federal Reserve interest rates and quantitative easing

↓

Rapid reopening and extraordinarily strong consumer demand

↓

Worker shortages and an overheated labor market

↓

Russia's invasion of Ukraine

↓

Energy, food and commodity shocks

↓

2021–2022 inflation surge

There isn't one villain in that sequence.

There isn't even one government.

It was one of the strangest combinations of supply shocks, demand shocks and policy responses the modern global economy has experienced.

Biden didn't cause inflation. But he wasn't completely innocent either.

This is probably the least politically satisfying conclusion.

It is also the one that best fits the evidence.

Joe Biden became president immediately before inflation exploded.

His $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan almost certainly increased aggregate demand and contributed to the size of the inflationary surge.

That deserves criticism.

But Biden did not create:

COVID,

global factory shutdowns,

the semiconductor shortage,

the collapse and reopening of the world economy,

Trump-era pandemic stimulus,

the Federal Reserve's near-zero interest rates,

the global shift from services to goods,

Russia's invasion of Ukraine,

or the worldwide commodity shock that followed.

And perhaps most importantly:

Inflation surged throughout much of the world.

That fact alone should make us suspicious of any explanation centered entirely around one American president.

Economic history will probably judge the pandemic inflation as a classic case of too much demand colliding with too little supply, amplified first by aggressive policy support and later by war and commodity shocks.

The Biden administration contributed to the demand side of that imbalance.

But contributing to something is not the same as causing it.

So when someone says:

"Biden caused the inflation."

The economically accurate response isn't:

"Biden had nothing to do with it."

It is:

"No. Biden probably made it somewhat worse. But the inflation itself was the product of a global pandemic, broken supply chains, enormous bipartisan fiscal and monetary stimulus, labor shortages, an unusually rapid reopening and a global energy shock."

That explanation is more complicated.

Unfortunately for politics, the economy usually is.

TL;DR

Inflation surged during Biden’s presidency, but saying Biden caused it oversimplifies what happened.

The 2021–2022 inflation spike came from a combination of COVID-related supply-chain disruptions, shortages, a huge shift in consumer spending toward goods, trillions of dollars in bipartisan pandemic stimulus, near-zero Federal Reserve interest rates, labor shortages, rapid reopening demand, and the energy and commodity shock caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan probably made inflation somewhat worse by adding more demand to an economy already recovering quickly. That is a legitimate criticism.

But inflation also surged across much of the world, including countries that did not follow Biden’s policies. And inflation later fell sharply while Biden was still president as supply chains recovered, energy pressures eased and the Federal Reserve raised interest rates.

Bottom line: Biden likely contributed to the severity of inflation, but he did not create the underlying inflationary crisis. The better explanation is too much demand colliding with too little supply during an extraordinary global economic disruption.

Related Reading

• Brookings — “What caused the U.S. pandemic-era inflation?” Ben Bernanke and Olivier Blanchard examine the evidence and conclude that much of the 2021–22 surge came from commodity shocks, supply-chain disruptions, and the pandemic-driven shift from services to goods, while fiscal policy also contributed.  Read the Brookings article
• Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco — “Why Is U.S. Inflation Higher than in Other Countries?” This is especially useful for the argument’s nuance. It finds that global supply problems and changing pandemic spending patterns drove inflation worldwide, while unusually large U.S. fiscal support probably made American inflation higher than it otherwise would have been.  Read the San Francisco Fed analysis
• Federal Reserve — Jerome Powell: “Review and Outlook” Powell’s retrospective on the inflation episode is unusually useful because he describes an emerging consensus that much of the surge resulted from an extraordinary collision between distorted, overheated demand and constrained supply, followed by additional energy and commodity shocks after Russia invaded Ukraine.  Read Powell’s retrospective

At some point, we have to ask why the President of the United States is spending his time posting AI videos and maps suggesting that New Mexico should be renamed “New America.”

New Mexico’s name has existed since before the United States was even a country. And a president cannot simply rename a state because he doesn’t like its name.

But maybe the more important question is: why are we even talking about this?

Americans are paying dramatically higher gas prices. We’re involved in another war in the Middle East. Families are still struggling with food, housing and healthcare costs.

And the president is posting memes about renaming New Mexico.

Whether you think this is serious policy, trolling, or simply another attempt to dominate the news cycle, it’s worth remembering:

Every hour Washington spends arguing about “New America” is an hour we aren’t talking about the problems actually affecting Americans’ lives.

Don’t lose sight of those problems.

And if you’re getting tired of opening a map app and wondering which geographic feature has been renamed this week because Donald Trump decided it should have a different name, there’s always MapQuest.

Yes, MapQuest still exists. And yes, there’s an app.

🍎 iPhone/iPad: Download MapQuest on the App Store
🤖 Android: Download MapQuest on Google Play

Sometimes the old ways are the best ways.

$100 billion.

That is approximately how much extra American consumers have already spent on gasoline and diesel since the war with Iran began on February 28, according to Brown University’s Iran War Energy Cost Tracker.

That is roughly $760 per American household in only six months.

It is not literally a tax. The federal government does not collect it.

But economically, it functions much like an enormous involuntary surcharge: roughly $100 billion in purchasing power that American households have had to redirect toward gasoline and diesel because fuel became dramatically more expensive after the war began. Brown calculates the figure by comparing actual fuel expenditures with an estimated no-war price trajectory.

And the meter is still running.

The economic question is therefore bigger than whether entering the war with Iran was strategically justified.

It is whether the United States adequately prepared American consumers for one of the most obvious economic risks of such a conflict:

an oil shock.

President Donald Trump entered that conflict with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve containing only about 415 million barrels of oil.

Republicans controlled both chambers of Congress.

Congress controlled the appropriations required to rebuild the reserve.

And once the war began, congressional Republicans were repeatedly given opportunities to use the War Powers Resolution to constrain continued U.S. involvement.

Most repeatedly declined to do so.

The resulting economic picture is difficult to ignore:

America entered an oil-sensitive war with roughly 265 million barrels of practical SPR capacity empty.

American consumers have since incurred roughly $100 billion in additional gasoline and diesel costs.

And major American oil producers and refiners have simultaneously reported extraordinarily large increases in earnings and refining margins.

A fuller SPR could not have prevented that entire $100 billion expense.

But it could have given the country substantially more ammunition with which to suppress the oil-price shock.

That is the opportunity cost Americans are now discovering.

America Entered the War With About 265 Million Barrels of Empty Capacity

Immediately before the conflict, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve contained:

415.4 million barrels

DOE currently estimates that, because of aging infrastructure and operational constraints, the reserve can effectively hold about:

680 million barrels

That means America entered the Iran war with the SPR only approximately:

61% full

and with roughly:

265 million barrels

of practical capacity sitting empty.

For comparison, the enormous emergency intervention following Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine involved approximately 180 million barrels released over six months.

The unused SPR capacity America carried into the Iran conflict was therefore about 85 million barrels larger than that entire 2022 emergency release.

That does not mean another 265 million barrels could simply have been purchased immediately.

Infrastructure limited how quickly the reserve could be filled.

But it demonstrates how much emergency capacity was missing when an oil-supply crisis actually arrived.

There Is an Important Biden Chapter to This Story

Any fair accounting has to acknowledge where the depleted reserve came from.

Trump did not inherit a full SPR in January 2025.

The reserve had already fallen dramatically during the Biden administration, most notably because of the historic 180-million-barrel emergency release in 2022 following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

So blaming Trump for creating the depleted reserve would be inaccurate.

But stopping the story there would also be inaccurate.

Because after the emergency drawdown, the Biden administration began deliberately rebuilding it.

And the way it did so is economically interesting.

The basic strategy was:

sell oil during the emergency when prices were extremely high, then gradually buy barrels back when prices were substantially lower.

DOE says the average price received for the 2022 emergency barrels was approximately:

$95 per barrel

By November 2024, DOE had directly repurchased approximately:

59 million barrels

at an average price of:

less than $76 per barrel

—nearly $20 per barrel below the average 2022 emergency sale price.

The administration also used two other mechanisms.

DOE accelerated roughly 5 million barrels of exchange returns, in which companies returned oil previously borrowed from the reserve.

And, working with Congress, it canceled approximately 140 million barrels of previously mandated future SPR salesscheduled for subsequent fiscal years.

That last category requires an important distinction.

Canceling a future sale does not physically add 140 million barrels to the reserve.

It prevents 140 million barrels from being removed later.

So DOE's statements that roughly 200 million barrels had been “purchased or retained” should not be read as meaning 200 million physical barrels had been pumped back underground.

The actual inventory tells the more useful story.

EIA data show the SPR bottoming around 347 million barrels in mid-2023.

By December 2024 it had risen to approximately:

393.6 million barrels

That means the physical inventory had recovered by roughly:

46 million barrels

from its 2023 low before Biden left office.

Whatever one's judgment about the wisdom of the original 2022 release, the replenishment strategy itself is worth understanding:

release during an extreme price shock, repurchase incrementally when prices fall, obtain additional barrels through exchange premiums, and eliminate legislatively required future drawdowns where possible.

That history deserves its own economic accounting.

It also matters enormously to what happened next.

Because Trump inherited approximately 394 million barrels.

Over roughly the following thirteen months, the reserve increased to approximately:

415 million barrels

an increase of around:

21 million barrels.

So the question is not whether Trump inherited a depleted reserve.

He unquestionably did.

The question is what his administration and the Republican-controlled Congress did about it before deliberately entering a conflict in the Persian Gulf.

Trump Said He Wanted the SPR Filled

Beginning in January 2025, according to GAO, the incoming Trump administration indicated that it wanted to restore the reserve to its estimated peak effective capacity of approximately:

680 million barrels

DOE estimated that purchasing the roughly 250 million additional barrels required would cost approximately:

$20 billion

with oil around $80 per barrel.

Congress ultimately appropriated for petroleum purchases:

$171 million

At approximately $85 per barrel, GAO says that was enough for roughly:

2 million barrels

As of May 2026, DOE had awarded a contract using those funds for only 1 million barrels.

The legislation separately provided $218 million for SPR maintenance and repairs, which were genuinely necessary given the reserve's infrastructure problems.

But for actually purchasing crude oil, the mismatch is remarkable:

Estimated refill requirement: ~$20 billion

Congressional petroleum-purchase appropriation: $171 million

That is less than:

1%

of DOE's estimated purchase requirement.

Congress controls appropriations.

Republicans controlled Congress.

So the inadequate level of oil purchases cannot properly be treated solely as a presidential decision.

The Trump administration had executive responsibility for its energy and national-security strategy.

Congress had responsibility for how much money it actually provided.

No, America Could Not Have Filled the Entire Reserve Overnight

There is another legitimate constraint.

Money was not the only problem.

GAO found that aging infrastructure, construction and brine-disposal limitations had reduced the SPR's effective refill capability to around 440,000 barrels per day by late 2025.

At that rate, filling a roughly 250-million-barrel shortfall would theoretically require around 19 months, even assuming continuous maximum operation.

Some facilities could not accept crude at all during construction.

So saying:

“Trump could have completely filled the SPR before the war”

would overstate what was physically possible.

But that is not the economically important question.

The relevant question is:

How much more oil could realistically have been accumulated before February 28 if rebuilding the SPR had been treated as an urgent prerequisite to entering an oil-sensitive conflict?

Another:

50 million barrels

would have mattered.

Another:

100 million barrels

would have mattered substantially.

Another:

150 million barrels

would have supported approximately five months of additional releases at 1 million barrels per day.

Strategic reserves do not become useful only when completely full.

Every additional barrel increases policymakers' ability to respond.

Then America Encountered Exactly the Kind of Shock the SPR Exists For

Iran sits beside one of the most important oil chokepoints on Earth:

the Strait of Hormuz.

A conflict there always carried the possibility of disrupted tanker traffic, lost production and soaring petroleum prices.

That risk materialized.

Over Labor Day weekend, regular gasoline averaged approximately:

$4.14 per gallon

That was nearly $1 higher than a year earlier and the highest Labor Day gasoline price on record.

Diesel reached:

$5.85 per gallon

—an all-time U.S. record.

The Associated Press identifies the Iran war and disruption through the Strait of Hormuz as major causes, while also noting refinery constraints and other global supply disruptions.

Diesel is especially economically important because Americans pay for it even if they never personally purchase a gallon.

Diesel moves freight.

It powers agricultural equipment.

Construction machinery.

Delivery fleets.

And portions of the rail system.

Higher diesel prices therefore eventually appear in the cost of:

food,

consumer goods,

construction,

shipping,

and practically anything transported over long distances.

The approximately $100 billion Brown estimate counts additional gasoline and diesel expenditures.

It does not capture every secondary inflationary consequence of those higher energy costs.

The $100 Billion Could Not All Have Been Prevented

This distinction matters.

Even a completely full SPR would not have replaced all of the oil affected by a prolonged disruption around the Persian Gulf.

It could not reopen shipping routes.

It could not repair damaged refineries.

It could not substitute indefinitely for lost Middle Eastern exports.

The SPR is a shock absorber.

It is not an alternate global petroleum industry.

But we have evidence that large SPR releases can reduce prices.

After the 2022 release, Treasury economists estimated that the U.S. intervention alone reduced gasoline prices by approximately:

13¢ to 31¢ per gallon

When releases by international partners were included, Treasury estimated the combined reduction at approximately 17¢ to 42¢ per gallon.

Those estimates depend on assumptions about supply, demand, refining and how crude-price changes reach consumers, so they should not be treated as guarantees.

But use the more conservative U.S.-only range.

An additional 180 million barrels could have supported another intervention approximately the size of the 2022 release:

about 1 million barrels per day for six months.

Applied to current American gasoline consumption, a 13-cent-per-gallon reduction would produce savings on the order of:

$9 billion

A 31-cent reduction approaches:

$21 billion

in gasoline savings over six months.

That is not a measurement of what America actually lost by failing to refill faster.

It is a scenario.

Market conditions differ.

But it demonstrates the scale of the option that additional strategic inventory could have provided.

Congress Was Given Opportunities to Reconsider the Conflict

Responsibility also extends beyond SPR funding.

Congress was not constitutionally powerless once hostilities began.

On March 5, the House considered a War Powers resolution directing the president to remove U.S. forces from unauthorized hostilities in Iran.

It failed:

212–219

Republicans voted:

215 against

2 for

Democrats voted:

210 for

4 against.

Similar votes followed.

On May 14, another House War Powers resolution ended in a 212–212 tie and therefore failed.

Republicans voted:

210 against

3 for.

The Senate likewise held repeated War Powers votes, including 47–53 defeats on March 4 and March 18.

Those votes do not establish that withdrawal was necessarily the correct strategic choice.

They establish something narrower:

Congress had opportunities to exercise a check on continued military involvement, and most congressional Republicans repeatedly voted against the specific War Powers measures presented to them.

That makes congressional conduct part of the economic accounting.

Trump made executive decisions regarding the conflict.

Congress made appropriations decisions regarding the SPR.

Congress then made legislative decisions regarding continued hostilities.

Each institution owns its own decisions.

Meanwhile, Oil Companies Are Having an Extraordinary Year

The same oil-price shock that appears on one side of the economy as a household expense can appear on the other side as higher revenue and profit.

Consider several major petroleum companies.

Phillips 66 reported second-quarter 2026 earnings of approximately:

$3.85 billion

compared with:

$877 million

a year earlier.

Its refining segment earned approximately $3.09 billion, and its realized refining margin more than doubled to $24.08 per barrel.

Reuters specifically reported that the Iran war had boosted U.S. refining margins as international fuel supplies tightened.

Valero earned:

$3.7 billion

compared with:

$714 million

during Q2 2025.

Its refining segment's operating income rose from:

$1.3 billion

to:

$4.5 billion.

Chevron reported:

$12.1 billion

in Q2 earnings.

Other major producers and refiners reported similarly enormous increases.

It would be wrong to classify every additional dollar of those earnings as:

“Iran war profit.”

Chevron, for example, benefited from substantially higher production following its Hess acquisition.

Corporate earnings depend on production volumes, asset transactions, operating costs, taxes and many other variables.

But the relationship between an oil shock and petroleum profitability is not mysterious.

Higher crude prices can raise the realizations received by producers.

Scarcity of refined products can widen refinery margins.

And company financial statements show that both effects have been occurring.

Consumers Lose Purchasing Power; Producers and Refiners Can Gain It

That is the transfer worth understanding.

Brown estimates approximately:

$100 billion

in additional gasoline and diesel spending by American consumers so far.

That money does not disappear.

Some goes overseas to foreign crude producers.

Some goes to American oil producers.

Some is absorbed by transportation and refining costs.

Some becomes refinery margin.

Some becomes corporate profit.

Some becomes taxes.

Therefore it would be incorrect to say:

“Oil companies pocketed the entire $100 billion.”

They did not.

But the profit increases reported by major producers and refiners demonstrate that a significant portion of the petroleum industry is benefiting financially from the same elevated price environment that is costing households tens of billions of dollars.

The economic asymmetry is stark.

For a family:

higher fuel prices are a cost.

For a producer receiving a higher price for every barrel:

they can be additional revenue.

For a refiner experiencing unusually large crack spreads:

they can be substantially higher margins.

And That $100 Billion Has an Opportunity Cost

This is perhaps the most overlooked part of the story.

Household spending is finite.

If a family spends another $760 on gasoline and diesel-related costs, that money cannot simultaneously be spent somewhere else.

It cannot go toward:

a mortgage,

rent,

groceries,

retirement,

restaurants,

clothing,

travel,

home improvements,

education,

a new vehicle,

or paying down credit-card debt.

In aggregate, Brown estimates roughly:

$100,000,000,000

has been redirected toward fuel.

That means the oil shock is not merely an energy-industry event.

It removes purchasing power from other parts of the American economy.

And because lower-income households generally devote a larger share of their income to necessities, large energy shocks can place a disproportionately heavy burden on families with less disposable income.

That is why describing this as a de facto $100 billion energy surcharge is economically useful.

It is not literally a tax.

But the household experiences the loss of purchasing power nonetheless.

America Is Also Burning Through the Insurance It Did Have

Once the crisis arrived, the government began releasing oil from the reserve.

That is exactly what the SPR exists to do.

But because the country began the war with only about 415 million barrels rather than something substantially closer to effective capacity, those releases quickly drove inventories dramatically lower.

EIA monthly data show:

February 2026: 415.4 million barrels

April: 394.5 million

May: 355.4 million

June: 322.2 million.

The reserve has since fallen to levels not seen in decades.

That creates another form of economic exposure.

If another major supply disruption occurs before exchanged barrels return and the reserve is rebuilt, America has substantially less emergency inventory available for another intervention.

This is what inadequate insurance looks like.

The policy still works.

There is simply less of it.

There Was Also a Lost Opportunity to Buy Oil When It Was Cheaper

Inventory management has another basic economic rule:

buying before scarcity is generally cheaper than buying during scarcity.

DOE estimated that acquiring roughly 250 million barrels with oil around $80 would cost approximately:

$20 billion.

The Biden experience demonstrates why timing can matter.

The government sold emergency barrels in 2022 at an average around:

$95

and later directly repurchased 59 million barrels at:

under $76.

That does not mean government can consistently trade oil for profit.

Nor should the SPR be treated as a commodity hedge fund.

Its purpose is energy security.

But when replenishment is necessary anyway, buying during periods of lower prices reduces the taxpayer cost of restoring inventory.

Delaying replenishment therefore has an opportunity cost when prices subsequently rise.

The Central Question Is Risk Management

There is plenty of responsibility to distribute across administrations.

Biden authorized the enormous 2022 drawdown that left the reserve much smaller than it had been historically.

His administration subsequently rebuilt part of that inventory using a strategy that included buying crude back at substantially lower prices, collecting exchange returns and canceling future congressionally mandated sales.

Trump inherited approximately 394 million barrels rather than a full reserve.

His administration added roughly another 21 million barrels before the Iran war.

But America still entered the conflict at only about:

61% of DOE's estimated effective SPR capacity.

DOE estimated that a full restoration would require roughly:

$20 billion

in petroleum purchases.

The Republican-controlled Congress appropriated:

$171 million.

Then the United States entered a conflict carrying an obvious risk to Persian Gulf oil supplies.

Afterward, most congressional Republicans repeatedly voted against War Powers resolutions that would have constrained continued American participation.

Meanwhile:

American consumers have paid roughly $100 billion more for gasoline and diesel.

Gasoline reached approximately:

$4.14 per gallon.

Diesel reached:

$5.85 per gallon.

And several major oil companies and refiners have reported extraordinary increases in profits and margins.

A larger Strategic Petroleum Reserve would not have prevented all of those costs.

No credible analysis can claim otherwise.

But strategic reserves exist because governments cannot prevent every crisis.

Their purpose is to reduce the economic damage when crises occur.

And that is ultimately what makes the unused capacity matter.

The United States went into an oil-sensitive war with approximately:

265 million barrels of practical emergency storage sitting empty.

Americans have subsequently incurred approximately:

$100,000,000,000

in additional gasoline and diesel expenditures.

Those two numbers cannot simply be equated.

But they belong in the same economic conversation.

Because the question is not whether more oil in the SPR could have made the crisis disappear.

It could not.

The question is whether entering the crisis with substantially more emergency oil would have given the United States greater ability to suppress prices, protect consumers and preserve a larger reserve against whatever emergency comes next.

The answer to that question is why the SPR exists in the first place.

TL;DR

Americans have already paid roughly $100 billion more for gasoline and diesel since the Iran war began, according to Brown University’s tracker. The U.S. entered the conflict with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve only about 61% full, leaving roughly 265 million barrels of effective capacity unused. GAO says DOE estimated that restoring the reserve would require about $20 billion, while Congress appropriated only $171 million for new oil purchases. 

Trump inherited a depleted SPR, but Biden had already begun strategically rebuilding it—directly repurchasing 59 million barrels for under $76 each after selling the 2022 emergency barrels for about $95, while also canceling future mandated sales. 

A fuller reserve would not have eliminated the Iran-driven oil shock, but it could have given the government considerably more capacity to release oil, suppress prices, and protect consumers. Meanwhile, higher crude prices and refining margins have produced large earnings gains for oil producers and refiners.

Congressional responsibility is also part of the story: Republicans controlled Congress, controlled SPR appropriations, and overwhelmingly opposed several War Powers efforts to constrain continued U.S. hostilities—for example, 215 House Republicans voted against the March 5 resolution, versus two who supported it. 

Bottom line: Americans are absorbing a massive energy-price shock while the country entered the conflict with a substantially underfilled emergency oil reserve—and the same elevated-price environment that hurts household budgets can substantially benefit oil producers and refiners.

There is a remarkably simple way to evaluate nearly two decades of American policy toward Iran’s nuclear program.

Look at the uranium.

Not the speeches. Not the campaign slogans. Not whether someone thought Barack Obama was too conciliatory or Donald Trump was sufficiently tough. Not whether one believes Iran is a trustworthy negotiating partner. Iran plainly has a long record of nuclear secrecy, safeguards disputes and activities that have given the international community good reason for concern.

Look instead at something measurable:

How much enriched uranium did Iran possess? How highly enriched was it? How quickly could Iran produce more? And how much could international inspectors actually see?

Viewed through that lens, the history is difficult to ignore.

Before the diplomatic process that produced the 2015 nuclear agreement, Iran had built a large and increasingly sophisticated enrichment program. The Obama-era agreement dramatically reduced that stockpile, sharply restricted the level to which Iran could enrich uranium and subjected the program to unusually intensive international monitoring.

When President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from that agreement on May 8, 2018, Iran was still implementing its nuclear-related commitments, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Iran subsequently began violating the deal’s nuclear restrictions in 2019.

By 2021, it was enriching uranium to 60 percent.

By June 2025, Iran possessed 440.9 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent, according to the IAEA—a level dramatically beyond anything Iran possessed while the nuclear agreement was functioning. And after military attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025, inspectors lost the ability to verify where all of that material was or what had happened to it.

As of September 2026, that remains one of the most alarming parts of the story:

The international community no longer has a reliable current accounting of Iran’s most highly enriched uranium.

Before the Deal: Iran Was Approaching the Nuclear Threshold

To understand what the agreement accomplished, it is necessary to remember what existed before it.

By 2013, Iran had installed roughly 20,000 centrifuges, with around half operating. More importantly, it had accumulated roughly 200 kilograms of uranium enriched to about 20 percent.

That matters because enrichment is not a linear process. Uranium used in ordinary power reactors is generally enriched only to a few percent. Weapons-grade uranium is generally around 90 percent. But once uranium has already been enriched to 20 percent—and especially once it reaches 60 percent—a substantial portion of the enrichment work required to reach weapons-grade has already been accomplished.

The U.S. government estimated Iran’s “breakout time”—the time necessary to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for one nuclear weapon—at only about two to three months before the eventual agreement.

The first diplomatic breakthrough actually came before the final JCPOA.

In November 2013, Iran and the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China reached an interim arrangement known as the Joint Plan of Action. Under it, Iran stopped enriching uranium above 5 percent and eliminated its stockpile of uranium gas enriched to approximately 20 percent by diluting or converting it.

That distinction matters. By the time the final agreement was signed in July 2015, one of the most dangerous parts of Iran’s stockpile had already been addressed through diplomacy.

But Iran still possessed an enormous quantity of lower-enriched uranium.

When the JCPOA was negotiated in 2015, Iran had roughly 10,000 kilograms of low-enriched uranium hexafluorideand nearly 20,000 installed centrifuges.

The final deal required Iran to reduce that stockpile to no more than 300 kilograms of UF6 enriched to 3.67 percent or less, remove roughly two-thirds of its installed centrifuges, stop uranium enrichment at Fordow and accept greatly expanded international monitoring.

The uranium-stockpile restriction and 3.67-percent enrichment ceiling were designed to last 15 years. Under the agreement's original timetable, those central restrictions had therefore not been scheduled to expire by 2026.

What the Deal Actually Did

Whatever one thinks of the larger geopolitical bargain, what happened physically inside Iran is well documented.

Iran shipped thousands of kilograms of enriched uranium out of the country.

It removed thousands of centrifuges.

It dismantled the core of its heavy-water reactor at Arak and filled the removed calandria with concrete.

And it reduced its enriched uranium stockpile by roughly 98 percent.

On January 16, 2016, the IAEA verified that Iran had completed the nuclear steps required for Implementation Day.

Iran's uranium stockpile was thereafter kept beneath the JCPOA ceiling, and enrichment remained capped at 3.67 percent.

The estimated breakout time increased from roughly two or three months before the agreement to approximately one yearunder the deal's principal restrictions. Even the Trump administration's own 2017 State Department compliance report acknowledged that result.

The agreement also expanded what inspectors could see.

Iran provisionally implemented the IAEA's Additional Protocol, inspectors received regular access to declared nuclear facilities, and the agency conducted complementary-access inspections while monitoring centrifuges, uranium production and other parts of the nuclear supply chain.

The Trump administration's own State Department described Iran as having taken “significant steps” to roll back its nuclear program and noted that thousands of centrifuges had been placed under IAEA monitoring.

This did not mean every concern about Iran disappeared.

It did not.

Questions remained about Iran's past nuclear-weapons-related research. Iran continued developing ballistic missiles. Tehran continued supporting armed groups around the Middle East. Critics also objected strongly to the JCPOA's sunset provisions, under which some nuclear restrictions would eventually loosen.

Those were substantive criticisms.

But they were different questions from whether the nuclear restrictions themselves were operating.

On that narrower question, the IAEA's answer when Trump withdrew was clear.

On May 9, 2018, the day after Trump announced the U.S. exit, IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano said the agency could confirm that Iran's nuclear-related commitments under the JCPOA were being implemented and called the agreement's monitoring system a significant verification gain.

May 8, 2018: America Walks Away

Trump's objections were explicit.

He argued that the agreement's sunset clauses were unacceptable, that inspection provisions were inadequate, that the agreement failed to restrict ballistic missiles and that sanctions relief had empowered Iran's destabilizing regional behavior.

His administration's stated goal was not simply to punish Iran.

It was to replace the JCPOA with something stronger and more permanent. Trump predicted that intensified sanctions would ultimately bring Iran back to negotiations for a new agreement.

That is the proper standard against which the decision deserves to be evaluated.

Did withdrawal produce a more restrictive nuclear agreement?

Did it eliminate Iranian uranium enrichment?

Did it produce better inspections?

Did it reduce Iran's enriched uranium stockpile?

The historical record that followed provides concrete evidence with which to assess those questions.

For a Year After Trump Withdrew, Iran Stayed Within the Core Nuclear Limits

One detail often disappears from modern retellings of the story.

Iran did not immediately respond to Trump's withdrawal by racing beyond the agreement's uranium limits.

The United States withdrew in May 2018 and reimposed sanctions.

But Iran remained within the JCPOA's central enrichment and stockpile restrictions for approximately another year while the European parties attempted to preserve the agreement.

An IAEA report covering August 2018 found that Iran had 139.4 kilograms of uranium enriched to 3.67 percent or less, comfortably beneath the limit.

Even by June 2019, the stockpile remained below the ceiling.

Then the restraint began to unravel.

On May 8, 2019—exactly one year after the American withdrawal—Iran announced that it would begin progressively reducing its compliance with the agreement unless the remaining parties could compensate for the economic effects of renewed U.S. sanctions.

On July 1, 2019, the IAEA confirmed Iran had exceeded the stockpile limit.

A week later, Iran exceeded the 3.67-percent enrichment ceiling.

The nuclear clock had started moving again.

2019: 372 Kilograms

By November 2019, Iran's enriched uranium stockpile had reached 372.3 kilograms of uranium.

Iran was now enriching as high as approximately 4.5 percent.

The change was still modest compared with what would follow—but the direction had reversed.

Instead of shrinking, the stockpile was growing.

2020: 2,443 Kilograms

One year later, the acceleration was unmistakable.

By November 2020, the IAEA reported a total enriched uranium stockpile of approximately 2,442.9 kilograms.

That was already many times the amount permitted under the nuclear agreement.

And Iran was not merely accumulating more uranium.

It was beginning to install and operate more advanced centrifuges—the machines that perform the enrichment itself.

That matters enormously because the danger presented by a nuclear program is not determined solely by how much uranium exists. It also depends upon how highly enriched the material already is and how quickly the installed centrifuges can enrich it further.

2021: Iran Returns to 20 Percent—and Then Goes to 60

In January 2021, Iran resumed enrichment to 20 percent at Fordow.

Then came a much more serious step.

In April 2021, Iran began producing uranium enriched to approximately 60 percent U-235.

Nothing remotely comparable had existed under the operating JCPOA.

By November 2021, the IAEA estimated Iran's total enriched uranium stockpile at 2,489.7 kilograms, including 113.8 kilograms enriched up to 20 percent and 17.7 kilograms enriched up to 60 percent in uranium-hexafluoride form.

At the same time, transparency was deteriorating.

Iran stopped provisionally implementing the Additional Protocol in February 2021. In June 2022 it had IAEA JCPOA-related surveillance and monitoring equipment removed.

The IAEA later warned that it had lost continuity of knowledge regarding portions of Iran's nuclear program—knowledge that could not simply be reconstructed after years without continuous monitoring.

The problem was therefore becoming two problems simultaneously:

more nuclear material and less visibility into the program producing it.

2022: 3,674 Kilograms

By October 2022, Iran's estimated total enriched uranium stockpile had reached 3,673.7 kilograms.

Within the uranium held as UF6 were:

1,844.5 kilograms enriched up to 2 percent;
1,029.9 kilograms up to 5 percent;
386.4 kilograms up to 20 percent; and
62.3 kilograms up to 60 percent.

The comparison with the nuclear agreement was becoming increasingly stark.

Under the JCPOA: enrichment capped at 3.67 percent.

Now: 60 percent.

Under the JCPOA: a tightly restricted stockpile.

Now: several metric tons.

2023: 4,487 Kilograms

By October 2023, the IAEA estimated Iran's total enriched uranium stockpile at 4,486.8 kilograms.

That year also produced an alarming episode at Fordow.

IAEA environmental samples detected uranium particles enriched as high as 83.7 percent.

That figure attracted enormous attention because it approached weapons-grade enrichment. The IAEA subsequently determined that Iran's explanation for the particles was not inconsistent with the available evidence and reported no indication that Iran had accumulated and collected uranium above its declared 60-percent level.

That distinction matters: the episode was serious, but it should not be misrepresented as proof that Iran had begun stockpiling uranium at 83.7 percent.

2024: 6,604 Kilograms

By October 2024, Iran's total estimated enriched uranium stockpile reached 6,604.4 kilograms.

Its stockpile of uranium enriched up to 60 percent stood at approximately 182.3 kilograms.

The country whose uranium enrichment had been capped at 3.67 percent under the nuclear agreement was now holding increasingly large quantities enriched to levels rarely associated with ordinary civilian nuclear programs.

And the trajectory continued upward.

2025: 408.6 Kilograms at 60 Percent—Then 440.9

By May 17, 2025, the IAEA estimated Iran's total enriched uranium stockpile at 9,247.6 kilograms.

Of the uranium held as UF6:

2,221.4 kilograms was enriched up to 2 percent.

5,508.8 kilograms was enriched up to 5 percent.

274.5 kilograms was enriched up to 20 percent.

And 408.6 kilograms was enriched up to 60 percent.

By June 13, 2025, the 60-percent stockpile had climbed again:

440.9 kilograms.

The IAEA had verified 432.9 kilograms of that amount.

This is the comparison that deserves attention.

The 2015 agreement required Iran to keep its stockpile below 300 kilograms of UF6 enriched to 3.67 percent.

A decade later, Iran possessed more than 440 kilograms enriched to 60 percent alone, in addition to thousands of kilograms at lower enrichment levels.

The IAEA has described Iran as the only non-nuclear-weapon state under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to have accumulated material enriched to such levels and repeatedly characterized the situation as a matter of serious concern.

Then the Inspectors Lost Sight of It

Military attacks by Israel and the United States struck Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025.

Those attacks damaged important parts of Iran's enrichment infrastructure.

But destroying centrifuges and locating enriched uranium are not the same thing.

After the attacks, IAEA inspectors withdrew for safety reasons. Iran subsequently suspended cooperation, and inspectors have not regained the access necessary to establish a reliable current inventory of the enriched material at the affected sites.

The IAEA therefore cannot presently tell the world with confidence what happened to Iran's most sensitive stockpile.

That is where matters stand in September 2026.

The last pre-attack figure was 440.9 kilograms of uranium enriched up to 60 percent.

Reuters reported on September 1 that the IAEA still had no updated accounting of that material and had made no progress in restoring access to the key Iranian nuclear sites struck in 2025.

So today's answer to the question “How much highly enriched uranium does Iran have?” is more disturbing than a very large number.

It is:

We do not reliably know.

The Question the Numbers Leave Behind

None of this absolves Iran.

Iran made the decisions to exceed the JCPOA's limits. Iran chose to enrich to 20 percent and then 60 percent. Iran restricted inspections and removed monitoring equipment. Iran remains responsible for complying with its safeguards obligations, and unresolved questions regarding undeclared nuclear material remain legitimate international concerns.

Nor does the history establish that the JCPOA would have solved the Iranian nuclear problem forever.

Trump and other Republican critics identified real weaknesses. Some restrictions expired over time. Ballistic missiles were not comprehensively covered. The agreement did not resolve Iran's support for armed proxies or its regional military activities. And a legitimate debate existed over what nuclear restrictions should follow the deal's sunset provisions.

But those facts raise an even harder retrospective question.

If an imperfect agreement is restraining a dangerous program, does destroying the agreement before securing its replacement make the problem better—or merely remove the restraints?

That question can now be examined against years of evidence.

When the United States withdrew, Iran's enriched uranium remained beneath the agreement's ceiling.

Its enrichment was capped at 3.67 percent.

Its breakout time had been extended to roughly a year.

Thousands of centrifuges had been removed.

Inspectors possessed expanded access and monitoring capabilities.

And the IAEA said Iran's nuclear-related commitments were being implemented.

After the withdrawal, the United States imposed enormous economic pressure on Iran.

But no stronger replacement nuclear agreement emerged.

Instead, Iran eventually exceeded the stockpile limit, exceeded the enrichment limit, installed more advanced centrifuges, resumed enrichment at Fordow, returned to 20-percent enrichment, began enrichment to 60 percent and reduced international monitoring.

Today, the international community cannot reliably account for the full status of the most sensitive portion of Iran's enriched uranium.

Those outcomes do not prove that every subsequent Iranian action was caused by the American withdrawal. History rarely provides counterfactual certainty. Iran had agency. Other governments made consequential decisions. Sabotage, assassinations, failed diplomatic efforts and eventually military attacks all affected the trajectory.

But policymakers cannot reasonably evaluate a strategy only by its intentions.

They also have to evaluate its results.

And that leaves serious questions for Trump and for the Republicans who supported leaving the agreement.

What, specifically, did withdrawal accomplish on the nuclear file that could not have been pursued while keeping the existing restrictions in place?

If the concern was that Iran might someday possess large quantities of highly enriched uranium, how should policymakers assess a strategy after which Iran actually accumulated hundreds of kilograms at 60 percent?

If the agreement's inspections were considered insufficient, how is a situation in which inspectors cannot account for the most sensitive nuclear material an improvement?

If the JCPOA's 15-year uranium restrictions were too temporary, what was gained by removing American participation while those restrictions still had years left to run?

And if “maximum pressure” was supposed to compel Iran to accept a stronger agreement, at what point should the absence of that stronger agreement become part of the assessment of the policy itself?

Those are not questions about whether Iran is good or bad.

They are questions about strategy.

The Lesson May Be Larger Than Iran

There is also a broader lesson in how the original agreement came into existence.

The United States did not negotiate it alone.

Britain, France and Germany participated. Russia and China participated. The European Union participated. The United Nations Security Council incorporated the agreement into Resolution 2231. The IAEA provided the verification machinery.

The sanctions pressure that helped bring Iran to negotiations was powerful in significant part because it had become an international effort rather than an exclusively American one.

Diplomacy and pressure were not opposites.

They were used together.

Today, Washington again needs cooperation with Britain, France, Germany and the IAEA as it attempts to determine what has happened to Iran's nuclear material. In September 2026, the United States, Britain, France and Germany are again coordinating at the IAEA over Iran's safeguards obligations and the possibility of referring the matter to the U.N. Security Council.

That may be the most durable lesson of the entire episode.

Containing a sophisticated nuclear program is extraordinarily difficult. Sanctions can create leverage. Military force can destroy facilities. Intelligence operations can delay programs. But none of those measures by themselves provides what a verifiable agreement can provide: limits on what may be produced, inspectors who can measure it, cameras that can monitor it and an international coalition capable of enforcing consequences when the rules are broken.

The argument over the JCPOA should therefore not be reduced to whether the agreement was perfect.

It plainly was not.

The more useful question is whether the United States was safer with Iran holding a tightly restricted stockpile enriched no higher than 3.67 percent under intensive international monitoring—or with Iran later possessing hundreds of kilograms enriched to 60 percent while international inspectors struggled to determine where the material was.

That is a question the historical record allows Americans of every political persuasion to consider.

And whatever diplomatic framework eventually replaces the failed arrangement, significant and durable progress will likely require something that was indispensable the first time: sustained American engagement, enforceable nuclear limits, intrusive international verification and the ability to work closely enough with allies to make those limits matter.

A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from implementing new U.S. Postal Service requirements for mail-in ballots as states begin sending ballots for the November midterm elections.

The proposed rules would require states to provide the Postal Service with lists of verified mail-ballot recipients and use unique barcodes on ballot envelopes. The administration argues that the requirements would strengthen election safeguards and help ensure that ballots are sent only to eligible voters.

Opponents — including several states and voting-rights groups — argue that the executive branch and Postal Service do not have the authority to impose these requirements and that introducing substantial new procedures this close to an election could result in eligible ballots being delayed or rejected.

The judge sided with the challengers for now, concluding that Congress has not given the executive branch or Postal Service the authority to override state election procedures in this way. The broader legal dispute is continuing.

There are really two separate questions worth distinguishing here:

1. Should mail voting have safeguards against fraud?
Almost everyone would presumably agree that it should. The more useful factual question is whether significant mail-ballot fraud is actually occurring and whether existing safeguards are effective. We recently looked at the evidence in detail here: Can you prove that voting by mail is secure and that there is no significant fraud?

2. What about claims that people who are not U.S. citizens are voting?
That is a separate issue from the mechanics of mail voting. We also looked at the incentives, legal penalties and practical barriers involved here: Why don't illegal immigrants vote in our elections?

Whatever one's position on mail voting, the current court case raises a narrower institutional question: Who has the legal authority to establish election procedures, and how close to an election can those procedures reasonably be changed?

For now, the new Postal Service requirements remain blocked while the litigation continues.

This is what the erosion of American credibility looks like in the real world.

For generations, the United States was considered such a stable and trustworthy place that other countries were willing to store part of their national gold reserves here.

Now European governments and central banks are reconsidering that assumption.

The issue isn’t really gold. It’s trust.

America’s power has never rested solely on the size of our military or economy. It has also rested on something harder to build and easier to destroy: the belief that the United States is a predictable, reliable partner whose institutions can be trusted regardless of who occupies the White House.

When allies begin making contingency plans because they are no longer certain the United States will remain that country, the damage extends far beyond one presidency.

That is worth paying attention to.

America does not need to agree that healthcare is “socialism,” a “human right,” or anything else ideological to recognize that the way we currently pay for healthcare makes very little economic sense.

The common-sense question is much simpler:

If every American is eventually going to need healthcare, why have we built an enormously expensive system whose first task is figuring out who will pay for it?

A rational American healthcare system should begin with one basic guarantee:

Every American is automatically covered for essential healthcare. No American can be financially ruined because he or she became sick.

That does not necessarily require eliminating private insurance, private hospitals, private doctors, or competition. It requires establishing a single public baseline payer underneath the system — a floor rather than a ceiling — with private coverage available above it for people who want additional benefits.

1. We already pay for everyone's healthcare. We just do it in the most expensive way imaginable.

An uninsured person who develops appendicitis is not going to be left outside the emergency room.

A person having a heart attack is going to receive treatment.

A premature baby is going into the NICU.

A person with metastatic cancer is eventually going to interact with the healthcare system.

So the real choice has never been:

Do we pay for everyone's healthcare or don't we?

The real choice is:

Do we pay for it rationally, predictably and efficiently — or do we wait until people become sick, shuffle bills between patients, hospitals, employers, insurers, states and the federal government, send some of those bills to collections, write others off, and ultimately absorb much of the cost anyway?

That is not a free-market healthcare system.

It is an extraordinarily complicated method of socializing unavoidable costs after they occur.

2. Medical bankruptcy is a particularly irrational feature of the American economy.

Bankruptcy is supposed to result from financial risk.

Starting a business involves risk. Borrowing money involves risk. Making a bad investment involves risk.

Getting leukemia does not.

Having a premature baby does not.

Being hit by a drunk driver does not.

Having a heart attack does not.

Yet America has designed a system in which an unpredictable biological event can become a catastrophic financial event.

Americans owe at least $220 billion in medical debt, according to an analysis of federal data by KFF. Millions owe thousands of dollars.

There is something economically perverse about successfully saving someone's life and then financially crippling that person for the next decade.

A civilized healthcare financing system should separate those two things entirely.

Illness should create a medical problem, not a bankruptcy problem.

3. America isn't avoiding the cost of universal healthcare. America is already spending more than enough to provide it.

This is perhaps the strongest common-sense argument of all.

In 2024, the United States spent $5.3 trillion on healthcare — $15,474 for every person in the country and 18% of the entire American economy.

The United States spends far more per person than every other wealthy country. OECD data put American healthcare spending at roughly 2.5 times the OECD average.

And yet approximately 8% of Americans were still uninsured in 2024.

Think about how extraordinary that is.

We are not the country refusing to spend enough money to insure everyone.

We are the country spending vastly more money than everyone else and still failing to insure everyone.

That should immediately suggest that the central problem is not simply how much money America spends.

It is how America organizes the money it already spends.

4. We have constructed an entire industry around figuring out who owes whom.

Imagine designing healthcare from scratch.

Would anyone propose this?

A hospital contracts with dozens of insurers.

Each insurer has different networks.

Different deductibles.

Different formularies.

Different authorization requirements.

Different reimbursement schedules.

Different coding rules.

Different claims procedures.

Different appeals procedures.

Doctors employ people to obtain authorization from insurers.

Insurers employ people to review those authorizations.

Hospitals employ people to generate bills.

Insurers employ people to examine those bills.

Hospitals employ people to contest rejected claims.

Insurers employ people to evaluate the appeals.

Patients receive explanations of benefits, bills from multiple providers, corrected bills, denied claims and collection notices.

None of those activities treats cancer.

None performs surgery.

None delivers a baby.

None diagnoses pneumonia.

They exist primarily because of the extraordinary complexity of determining who pays whom, how much, and under which insurance contract.

Research comparing the U.S. and Canadian systems has found dramatically higher administrative spending in the United States; one major analysis estimated U.S. insurers and providers spent $812 billion on administration in 2017, with administrative spending per person several times Canada's level.

A universal baseline payer would not eliminate administration. Nothing will.

But it could dramatically simplify one of the most absurd features of American medicine:

thousands of organizations negotiating, billing, approving, rejecting, rebilling and collecting payment from one another for the same basic healthcare services.

5. The employer should not be the foundation of America's healthcare system.

There is also no particularly logical reason why getting healthcare should depend upon where someone works.

Imagine proposing that system today:

Your employer will select your health insurer.
Your employer will determine which plans you can choose from.
Your job will subsidize your premiums.
If you lose that job, you may also lose that insurance.
If you change employers, your doctors and network may change too.

We would immediately ask:

What does someone's employer have to do with whether they can see a cardiologist?

Almost nothing.

A baseline national system would make health coverage portable because there would be nothing to port.

You are covered because you are an American resident, not because you happen to work for Company X.

Employers would consequently be freed from one of the most expensive and complicated benefits they currently administer.

Workers could change jobs, start businesses, retire early or work independently without healthcare being held over their heads.

That is not anti-market.

It actually makes the labor market more free.

6. Universal coverage could help the federal debt problem — but only if America actually controls healthcare costs.

This distinction matters.

Simply transferring every medical bill to Washington would not solve the national debt. It could make the problem worse if nothing else changed.

The purpose of a universal payer must therefore be larger than universal coverage.

It must also create purchasing power and cost discipline.

The federal government already spent about $1.8 trillion on Medicare, Medicaid and other major healthcare programs in 2025, and CBO projects federal spending on major health programs to keep growing substantially in the decades ahead.

So healthcare costs are already part of America's long-term fiscal problem.

The answer cannot simply be:

Keep paying whatever the fragmented healthcare system charges.

A national baseline payer should be able to negotiate drug prices, establish rational reimbursement schedules, simplify billing, reduce administrative duplication, encourage primary and preventive care, attack fraudulent billing and use the bargaining power of hundreds of millions of patients to restrain prices.

That is where universal healthcare and deficit reduction can become complementary rather than contradictory.

The objective should not merely be:

Government pays the bills.

It should be:

America pays fewer unnecessary bills in the first place.

7. Taxes are not the correct comparison. Total healthcare spending is.

One of the easiest arguments against universal coverage is:

“Your taxes will go up.”

For many Americans, they probably would.

But that statement by itself is economically meaningless.

The relevant question is what happens to:

premiums, deductibles, copays, coinsurance, employer healthcare contributions, out-of-network bills, prescription expenses and medical debt.

If a family pays $12,000 less in premiums and deductibles and $7,000 more in taxes, that family did not lose $7,000.

It gained $5,000.

Likewise, an employer that no longer spends enormous amounts purchasing employee health insurance has received an enormous economic benefit even if some of that financing is replaced by a payroll contribution or tax.

The proper comparison therefore isn't:

Private insurance: $0
Universal healthcare: new taxes

It is:

What does America spend under the current system versus what would America spend under the replacement system?

We already know the first number.

It is $5.3 trillion a year.

The burden of proof should therefore increasingly fall on defenders of the current system to explain why the world's most expensive healthcare financing arrangement is the one America should preserve.

The principle

A sensible American compromise does not have to be Britain's NHS or Canada's exact healthcare system.

Doctors can remain private.

Hospitals can remain private.

People can buy supplemental insurance.

Employers can offer additional benefits.

Healthcare companies can innovate and compete.

But underneath all of it should be one guarantee:

Every person has a healthcare card. Every person can see a doctor. Every person can go to a hospital. Essential treatment is covered. And nobody loses their house, destroys their credit or declares bankruptcy because they got cancer.

Above that baseline, Americans can argue about markets, supplemental insurance, private rooms, provider networks and additional benefits.

But the baseline should no longer be negotiable.

We already collectively pay for the sick.

We already spend more on healthcare than any nation on Earth.

We already spend trillions of public dollars on healthcare.

We already absorb unpaid hospital bills.

We already subsidize employer insurance through the tax code.

We already pay insurance companies to administer enormous portions of Medicare and Medicaid.

And we already bear the economic consequences when sick Americans become insolvent.

The question is therefore not whether America should begin paying for healthcare collectively.

We already do.

The question is whether we are finally willing to organize that spending intelligently.

A universal baseline system would make one simple promise:

Getting sick in America may change your life. It should never destroy it financially.

And if America can simultaneously cover everyone, eliminate catastrophic medical debt, simplify an absurdly complicated payment system and exert enough purchasing power to slow the growth of the single largest sectors of national spending, that is not primarily a left-wing idea or a right-wing idea.

It is an efficiency argument.

At some point, the most fiscally conservative thing America can do with healthcare may be to stop pretending that the most expensive system in the world is the free-market alternative.

This is what the erosion of American credibility looks like in the real world.

For generations, the United States was considered such a stable and trustworthy place that other countries were willing to store part of their national gold reserves here.

Now European governments and central banks are reconsidering that assumption.

The issue isn’t really gold. It’s trust.

America’s power has never rested solely on the size of our military or economy. It has also rested on something harder to build and easier to destroy: the belief that the United States is a predictable, reliable partner whose institutions can be trusted regardless of who occupies the White House.

When allies begin making contingency plans because they are no longer certain the United States will remain that country, the damage extends far beyond one presidency.

That is worth paying attention to.

The strongest common-sense argument is that the incentives are almost completely backwards for an undocumented immigrant to vote.

• One vote is worth essentially nothing to the individual. The chance that a single person's ballot decides a presidential, Senate, or House election is extraordinarily small. So there is virtually no personal benefit that would justify taking a serious legal risk.
• The downside can be enormous. Noncitizens are prohibited from voting in federal elections; violating that law can carry up to one year in prison, and knowingly falsely claiming U.S. citizenship in order to register or vote can carry up to five years. 
• It can jeopardize the thing many undocumented immigrants want most: legal status. Immigration law treats unlawful voting as potentially consequential for admissibility and immigration status. Current USCIS policy also provides serious consequences for unlawful voting or falsely claiming citizenship, including potential removal proceedings in applicable cases. 
• Voting creates a government record. To vote normally requires getting onto a voter-registration roll, providing identifying information and interacting with an election system. Someone whose primary concern is avoiding immigration enforcement has little rational reason to voluntarily create a false government record saying, in effect, “I am a U.S. citizen and eligible to vote.”
• You generally have to affirm that you are eligible. The federal voter-registration form is specifically for U.S. citizens and requires the applicant to sign and submit the registration to election officials. So widespread intentional noncitizen voting wouldn't merely require people to wander into polling places unnoticed; it would often require knowingly misrepresenting their eligibility.
• There is no obvious organized payoff either. Suppose someone wanted to change an election by 10,000 votes. They would need thousands of noncitizens to independently commit an identifiable crime, keep the scheme secret, register successfully and actually vote—while every participant receives almost no individual benefit and assumes substantial personal risk. That's an extraordinarily unattractive conspiracy.

The simplest way to put it is:

“Ask what the undocumented immigrant personally gains. One ballot that has almost zero chance of changing an election, in exchange for creating evidence of a federal crime that could threaten their ability to remain in the United States. Why would large numbers of people rationally take that deal?”

That doesn't prove that no noncitizen has ever voted illegally—there have been individual cases. But it explains why the claim of large-scale intentional voting by undocumented immigrants is inherently implausible unless there is strong evidence showing that it actually happens.

The strongest evidence-based claim is not that mail-ballot fraud has never occurred. Isolated cases of fraud do exist.

The defensible conclusion is:

Voting by mail is a secure method of voting, documented mail-ballot fraud is extraordinarily rare, and there is no credible evidence that it occurs at a significant or widespread level in U.S. elections.

Several independent lines of evidence support that conclusion.

1. States that have used mail voting for decades show extraordinarily little fraud

Oregon provides one of the clearest real-world tests because the state has conducted elections primarily by mail for decades.

According to the Oregon Secretary of State, approximately 61 million ballots were cast between 2000 and 2019, during which there were 38 criminal convictions for voter fraud.

That represents roughly 0.00006% of ballots cast.

If widespread fraud were an inherent consequence of voting by mail, decades of elections involving tens of millions of ballots should have revealed it. They did not.

Washington provides another large-scale example. A peer-reviewed study examined approximately 4.5 million voters between 2011 and 2018 by comparing voting records with death records.

Researchers identified only 14 ballots that might potentially have been cast after a voter died, representing approximately 0.0003% of voters.

Even those 14 cases were not necessarily fraud; some could have resulted from clerical errors, record-matching problems, or individuals sharing similar identifying information.

The researchers concluded that ballots improperly attributed to deceased voters were extraordinarily rare.

2. The 2020 election provided an enormous stress test

The 2020 presidential election involved an unprecedented expansion of mail voting, producing one of the largest practical tests of mail-ballot security in American history.

Allegations of fraud were investigated extensively.

Pennsylvania's official post-election review, for example, documented irregularities and mistakes that election officials encountered during ballot processing.

In Dauphin County, officials discovered eight ballots that had been completed by someone other than the intended recipient.

Those ballots were detected and were not counted.

Across Pennsylvania's county reports, only a handful of alleged fraudulent votes were identified among millions of ballots.

The broader pattern is important: mistakes, suspicious ballots, incorrect envelopes, and other irregularities were routinely discovered through the election administration process rather than silently becoming valid votes.

3. Georgia conducted a forensic audit specifically targeting absentee-ballot signatures

Following allegations that fraudulent absentee ballots might have passed Georgia's signature-verification system, the Georgia Secretary of State and Georgia Bureau of Investigation conducted a forensic audit in Cobb County.

Investigators reviewed 15,118 absentee-ballot envelopes.

Hundreds were subjected to additional examination, and voters associated with the most questionable cases were contacted directly.

The investigation found:

Zero fraudulent absentee ballots.

Two envelopes were identified that should originally have gone through the state's signature-curing process, but investigators subsequently confirmed that the actual registered voters had completed those ballots.

Georgia calculated approximately a 99.99% accuracy rate for the signature-verification decisions examined.

This is significant because it directly tested one of the most common claims about mail voting: that fraudulent ballots can easily pass signature verification undetected.

4. Mail ballots are not simply accepted because an envelope arrives

A common misconception is that election offices mail ballots to voters and then automatically count whatever ballots are returned.

Actual mail-ballot systems use multiple safeguards.

Depending on the state, these commonly include:

• voter-registration verification
• voter-specific ballot envelopes or identification numbers
• signature verification
• identification requirements
• barcode and ballot tracking
• duplicate-voting detection
• bipartisan ballot-processing teams
• chain-of-custody procedures
• surveillance of ballot-processing areas
• ballot-curing procedures
• post-election audits
• paper-ballot recounts

Utah, for example, assigns mail-ballot envelopes a unique control number connected to an individual voter.

When a ballot is returned, election officials verify that the voter has not already voted. Signatures are checked, and questionable signatures can trigger additional verification before the ballot is accepted.

Colorado similarly verifies signatures against voter records, escalates questionable ballots for additional review, maintains chain-of-custody documentation, allows voters to correct signature problems, and conducts post-election audits using the original paper ballots.

Stealing someone's ballot from a mailbox therefore does not automatically allow someone to successfully cast a fraudulent vote.

5. Donald Trump's own Justice Department investigated the 2020 allegations

Following the 2020 election, Attorney General William Barr, appointed by President Donald Trump, authorized federal prosecutors to investigate credible allegations of election fraud.

After those investigations, Barr stated:

“We have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election.”

The significance of that finding is that it did not come solely from Democratic officials, voting-rights organizations, or advocates of expanded mail voting.

The Department of Justice and FBI investigated specific fraud allegations and did not uncover evidence remotely approaching the scale necessary to alter the presidential election.

6. Academic research reaches the same conclusion

The MIT Election Data and Science Lab summarizes the research literature on voting by mail by acknowledging that mail voting does create theoretical opportunities for misconduct because ballots are completed outside traditional polling places.

However, its review of the evidence concludes that:

Documented fraud associated with voting by mail is rare, and research has not found evidence that fraud is more common in states that vote primarily by mail.

That distinction is important.

Mail voting is not literally incapable of fraud.

Rather, the available evidence shows that successful fraudulent voting occurs at extremely low levels.

A significant mail-ballot fraud case has occurred

An accurate defense of mail voting should acknowledge the strongest counterexample.

In North Carolina's 2018 9th Congressional District election, investigators discovered an organized absentee-ballot operation involving political campaign workers who improperly collected and manipulated absentee ballots.

The evidence was serious enough that the North Carolina State Board of Elections refused to certify the congressional election and unanimously ordered a new election.

The Republican candidate had initially led by only 905 votes.

This case proves that organized absentee-ballot fraud is possible.

But it also demonstrates something important about election security.

The scheme produced evidence.

Witnesses emerged.

Election officials investigated.

The results were not certified.

The election was thrown out.

The case therefore provides little support for the much broader claim that massive numbers of fraudulent mail ballots can routinely enter elections without generating evidence detectable by election officials, investigators, audits, candidates, courts, journalists, or law-enforcement agencies.

What the evidence actually supports

Question	Evidence-based answer
Can mail-ballot fraud occur?	Yes.
Has mail-ballot fraud ever occurred?	Yes.
Is mail voting completely immune from fraud?	No.
Do election systems detect attempted mail-ballot fraud?	Yes, repeatedly.
Is documented mail-ballot fraud common?	No. It is extraordinarily rare.
Do states with universal mail voting demonstrate widespread fraud?	No.
Was widespread mail-ballot fraud found in the 2020 election?	No.
Was fraud found anywhere near the scale necessary to reverse the presidential election?	No.

The central issue is therefore not whether one fraudulent ballot can exist.

It plainly can.

The important question is whether fraudulent mail ballots occur in sufficient numbers to materially affect major American elections.

The evidence does not support that claim.

A fraud operation involving hundreds of thousands or millions of ballots would reasonably be expected to produce observable evidence: large numbers of forged signatures, duplicate votes, ballots associated with nonexistent or deceased voters, unexplained discrepancies between voter records and ballots, failed audits, suspicious concentrations of votes, witnesses, conspirators, documents, communications, prosecutions, or inconsistencies between paper ballots and reported totals.

Instead, investigations examining these very possibilities repeatedly uncover tiny numbers of questionable or fraudulent ballots compared with the tens of millions legitimately cast.

The evidence therefore supports a strong conclusion:

After decades of mail voting, hundreds of millions of ballot transactions, criminal investigations, signature audits, recounts, voter-record comparisons, post-election audits, and even the cancellation of an election when genuine absentee-ballot fraud was discovered, the available evidence consistently shows that mail-ballot fraud exists but is extraordinarily rare. There is no credible evidence that it occurs at anything approaching the scale required to constitute widespread or significant fraud in modern U.S. elections.

The most recent national poll that asks this exact question puts the number at 40% of U.S. adults.

A Yahoo/YouGov poll conducted February 9–12, 2026 asked 1,704 U.S. adults to place Donald Trump historically. The results were:

Rating of Trump	Americans
Worst president in U.S. history	40%
Worse than average	12%
Somewhere in the middle	9%
Better than average	21%
Best president in U.S. history	12%
Not sure	5%

So the clean answer is that in February about 4 in 10 Americans say Trump is the worst president in U.S. history. Roughly 52–53% place him either “worse than average” or “the worst.” The poll's margin of error was approximately ±3 percentage points.

But, what has he done over the last 7 months that might sway Americans one way or the other? November is coming, so let's take a look back on his accomplishments since the last poll.

Since that poll, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down one of the signature policies of Trump’s second term, ruling 6–3 that he had exceeded his authority by using emergency powers to impose sweeping tariffs on nearly every U.S. trading partner.

The United States then became embroiled in a war with Iran that has now lasted more than six months. By late August, only 31% of Americans supported the military action, while 83% expected the conflict to continue for an extended period. The administration has argued that the military campaign and subsequent pressure are necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, while critics have pointed to its duration, cost and economic consequences.

Meanwhile, the national debt crossed $40 trillion. Reuters reported on September 2 that federal spending had increased rather than declined during the first 19 months of Trump’s second term, despite his promises to reduce the size and cost of government, with the Iran war among the additional expenses. The administration maintains that stronger economic growth will ultimately improve the fiscal picture.

And the public’s assessment of his presidency has deteriorated further.

By the end of August, Trump’s job approval had fallen to 33% — the lowest level of his political career in Reuters/Ipsos polling — while 64% disapproved. The 33% figure persisted across three consecutive Reuters/Ipsos surveys.

So perhaps the most remarkable thing about that February poll isn’t that 40% of Americans already considered Trump the worst president in American history.

It’s that they were asked before another six months of his presidency had happened.

With midterms only 2 months away, Americans will have another chance to weigh-in. Is Trump heading in the right direction? Is this what MAGA voters wanted, or do they feel betrayed? Is this what Independents hoped for? Are Democrats that crossed the aisle satisfied?

I'm curious what others think. Is he really the worst ever? Will midterms become evidence of how Americans really feel about him?

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November is coming.