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President Donald Trump is taking a triumphal tone as he plans to address the nation Wednesday night about the Iran war. But there is reason to worry that the conflict and its economic consequences for Americans may get worse before they get better. If so, Trump will struggle to shake off the damaging political legacy of the war.
In that he would join a long line of U.S. presidents going back to the 1970s who have seen their tenures defined by energy crisis and inflation — the economic scourge Trump has called a “nation-buster.”
“The oil shock of the ’70s was planted in the maybe subterranean part of our brains,” said Jay Hakes, a presidential historian who led the U.S. Energy Information Administration in the 1990s during the Clinton administration.
“It was there for a long time because it was just such a jolt. And I think this will be that kind of jolt,” Hakes said.
