The Dictatorship
Trump’s ‘Freedom Fuel’ push is a flimsy answer to rising gas prices
“FREEDOM FUEL HAS ARRIVED,” the White House’s X account announced this week. The post touted the first “Freedom Fuel Network” gas station, “lowering the price at the pump to $3.47 for our 47th President.” The White House’s announcement provided few details, leaving the reader — and the viewer of the accompanying video — the impression that the administration, whether through subsidy or takeover, was directly intervening to lower gas prices.
Freedom Fuel, however, is not stealth Marxism from a president fearmongering about “communist” Democrats. “A VERY smart Retailer, located throughout the Northeast, is stepping up,” Trump announced on social media before the July 4 weekend. “They are doing this because they love the U.S.A.” It is not clear who runs the Freedom Fuel Network, with 25 stations in Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey. The Delaware Department of State lists a filing for Freedom Fuel Network LLC from June 23, but no other information.
But whoever is behind Freedom Fuel, Trump’s praise is emblematic of his second year back in the White House: a half-hearted, poorly thought-out stunt.
The administration later clarified that its support is strictly promotional.
Though the White House post on X said, “President Trump is leading the charge to lower gas prices this summer,” the administration later clarified that its support is strictly promotional. “The administration is not involved in the company, nor has the administration given the company any funding. There is no other entity or person subsidizing the lower gasoline costs,” a White House spokesperson told BLN.
Trump is apparently hoping for copycats. For days, he has complained that gas prices are not as low as they were before he recklessly started a war with Iran. Now he is lobbying for other retailers to do what Freedom Fuel has done. “This Retailer is taking the lead,” he wrote in that social media post praising the mystery retailer. “And others should follow.”
Trump, in other words, is asking for volunteers to ease the economic pain that his own policies have caused. Such presidential requests have a checkered history. Herbert Hooverthe president with whom Trump most fears comparisons, declared more than a year into the Great Depression that the “local communities through their voluntary agencies have assumed the duty of relieving individual distress and are being generously supported by the public.” He said, “The result of magnificent cooperation throughout the country has been that actual suffering has been kept to a minimum during the past 12 months.”
The suffering was in fact far from minimal, and the economy would find salvation not in private enterprise or individual fortitude, but in government spending and relief.
When Gerald Ford assumed the presidency after Richard Nixon’s resignation, he not only had to pick up the pieces after Watergate, but he also had to deal with 11% inflation. Ford tried to enlist businesses and consumers to fight inflation. “The White House had approached a Madison Avenue advertising agency,” wrote historian Rick Perlstein, adding, “which came up with the slogan: Whip Inflation Now. WIN.”
Calling attention to Freedom Fuel reminds drivers how much prices have jumped since Trump launched the Iran war.
Ford, sporting a button with “WIN” in big block letters, gave an address to Congress promoting the idea and in a speech the following week, he encouraged Americans to “clean up your plates” and “brag about the fact you are a bargain hunter.” Newspapers printed a White House-issued form that Americans could send in to “enlist as an Inflation Fighter and Energy Saver Volunteers.”
But the Whip Inflation Now slogan, writes Perlstein, “was soon seen as a joke and a colossal political failure.” Still, at least Ford’s administration put everything into the effort. Trump just talks. Bring down prices now, he demands of the same oil company executives he promised a windfall when he campaigned in 2024. He blusters about investigating these companies for price gouging, when his company as a whole treats white-collar crime as a myth. And, as MS NOW’s Catherine Rampell points out at The Bulwarkwhen companies do cut prices, Trump habitually jumps in to claim credit.
Trump aligning himself with Freedom Fuel falls into that final category — and it is a particularly poor attempt. Freedom Fuel stations represent a tiny fraction of gas stations in a tiny fraction of states. Calling attention to Freedom Fuel reminds drivers how much prices have jumped since Trump launched the Iran war: The $3.47 price-per-gallon the White House praised on X is still about $0.50 more than the nationwide pre-war average. Oil prices make that price unsustainable anyway; 6abc Philadelphia reports that “at least two Freedom Fuel locations” have since raised prices to $3.57. And the manipulation of the gas price raises an uncomfortable question for Trump. As one Freedom Fuel customer asked 6abc“How did [the price] drop 50 cents in two days? Because if that’s the case, it can go down even further.”
That person is correct: It can go down even further, but only if Trump admits the Iran war has ended in defeat. To whip inflation now — at least inflation at the gas pump — we don’t need gas stations volunteering to make less profit; we need a president to come to his senses.
James Downie is an opinion editor for MS NOW Daily.