Everyone else pays

Welcome back to another episode of Survivor: Everyone Else Pays, where our host starts a war, runs out of money, and then asks the rest of the world to pick up the tab.

We are now entering the third week of the US and Israel’s war on Iran. Trump says he’s not ready to make a deal because the terms aren’t good enough yet. Iran says it never asked for one. Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi told CBS his nation “never asked for a ceasefire, and we have never asked even for negotiation.” One guy says the other side wants to quit. The other guy says he never asked for a deal in the first place. Someone is lying, and it’s probably the guy who said he’d make Mexico pay for a wall.

Speaking of making other people pay. Trump tweeted that China, France, Japan, South Korea, and the UK would all be sending warships to clean up his mess in the Persian Gulf. A team effort, he called it. Very generous of everyone to volunteer for a war nobody else voted for.

Except nobody volunteered.

Japan said the threshold to send warships is “extremely high” and that “independent judgement is fundamental.” Translation: not our war, not our bill. France said flat out it is not sending ships, posting that its aircraft carrier is staying in the eastern Mediterranean. South Korea said it was “closely monitoring” the situation and “comprehensively considering various measures.” That is diplomat-speak for absolutely nothing. China called for all parties to “ensure stable and unimpeded energy supply,” which is the geopolitical version of thoughts and prayers. Britain said it is “intensively looking” at options. Sure it is.

The World War III group chat has gone very quiet. Nobody is giving it the thumbs up emoji.

Here is why this matters to your wallet. There is a narrow stretch of water called the Strait of Hormuz and about 20 percent of the world’s oil moves through it every day. That waterway is now effectively shut. Hundreds of tankers are just sitting there waiting, which is what a DMV line looks like when the computers go down and nobody knows when they’re coming back up. When oil stops moving, everything gets more expensive. That bill goes to you too.

Gas at the pump jumped from $2.93 a month ago to $3.70 a gallon and climbing. Iran is not done talking either. The Revolutionary Guard told the world to “expect oil at $200 per barrel.” Two hundred dollars. At that point $3.70 gas is something you tell your grandkids about. Wall Street has spent three straight weeks losing ground. The only people smiling are the ones who own oil companies.

The economy was already shaky before any of this started. The US lost 92,000 jobs in February, the third time in five months payrolls dropped, with unemployment rising to 4.4 percent. That was before the war. Now throw soaring oil on top of a weakening job market and you get a K-shaped economy on steroids. Defense contractors are doing great. Oil companies are doing great. Everyone else is losing jobs and paying more for gas at the same time. Short-term pain is what they call it when it’s not happening to them.

Oh and someone has to pay for the war itself. Hassett went on TV this morning and said the US has spent $12 billion so far. The number keeps rising. No allies are splitting the bill. No exit plan means no end to the spending. The most expensive tab in the room and Trump is looking around for someone else to cover it.

Meanwhile Jared Kushner is doing just fine. While regular people are getting squeezed at the pump, Trump’s son-in-law and official peace envoy is out pitching investors to raise $5 billion for his private equity firm, hitting up the same Gulf governments he is supposed to be negotiating with on behalf of the United States. Saudi Arabia already put $2 billion into his fund after Trump’s first term, a deal the Saudis’ own advisers reportedly rejected before the Crown Prince personally overruled them. So the peace envoy is doing peace on one side of the table and fundraising on the other. That is a conflict of interest. In this White House they call it Tuesday.

So the administration hit every Sunday show to explain why all of this is fine. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on TV this is “short-term pain to get through to a much better place” and that the war will end “in the next few weeks, could be sooner.” When asked if he could guarantee gas prices come down, Wright said “there are no guarantees in wars at all.” So certain it ends soon. Zero guarantees on the part everyone actually cares about. That is not a plan. That is a guy at a party telling you everything is fine while the cat is on fire.

Here is what they skipped. Even if the war ended today, experts say it would take one to three months just to get oil moving through the strait again. The mess doesn’t clean itself up just because the guy who made it declares victory via tweet and a weird meme that only his base thinks is funny. At this point economists are not asking if there will be a global recession. They are asking how bad.

Everyone else pays. That’s not just the name of the show. That’s the whole strategy.