High inflation and rising energy prices amid the economy’s pandemic recovery were already making life more expensive.
Now, a little more than a week into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war, California has become the first US state to have an average gas price above $5 per gallon.
The average price of diesel is also skyrocketing, which will drive up transportation costs for businesses.
American lawmakers are pushing a bipartisan effort to end all imports of Russian oil and sanction Russia’s energy sector.
That the energy sector has so far been left mostly untouched speaks to the nature of the global energy supply. Russia was the world’s No. 2 oil producer last year, behind the US. A disruption in oil exports would drive up costs everywhere.
Politicians are willing to pay the price. “I’m all for that. Ban it,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said this week on Capitol Hill.
“I would gladly pay 10 cents more per gallon,” Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat, said at a Thursday press conference.
US gas prices are already up more than three times that amount during the course of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And energy traders, according to Isidore’s report, are…
