The president and his fellow Republicans look set to focus on affordability as the midterms near
President Donald Trump is expected to hold a meeting with oil executives at the White House on Tuesday. He's shown here at a similar meeting that he held in January after ousting Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
President Donald Trump is expected to meet with executives from oil companies at the White House on Tuesday, and their discussion will focus in part on reducing gasoline prices, according to multiple published reports.
The meeting looks like it's part of an ongoing effort by Trump administration officials and other Republican policymakers to address voters' concerns about affordability ahead of this year's midterm elections, which are now two months away.
Trump is huddling with executives from oil refiners to "discuss options on lower gasoline prices," said Chris Krueger, an analyst and managing director at TD Cowen's Washington Research Group, in a note. That's as several recent Trump announcements and some House of Representatives hearings this week "signal a shift in the GOP affordability message aimed at voters" in November, Krueger added.
Many analysts have been predicting defeats for candidates from Trump's Republican Party in the midterms due to voters' frustrations with paying more at the pump, as well as for groceries, utilities and other essentials. Democrats have an 89% chance of ending Republican control of the House in November's midterms, along with a 51% likelihood of flipping the Senate, according to figures from prediction market Polymarket. (Polymarket has a data partnership with Dow Jones, the publisher of MarketWatch.) Midterm elections have been bruising for most modern presidents.
The White House didn't immediately respond to MarketWatch's request for comment about Tuesday's meeting with oil executives. Exxon Mobil (XOM), which faced criticism from Trump after a prior White House meeting in January, also didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Trump administration has been tapping the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help push down gasoline prices, which climbed this year due to disruptions in the Middle East since Trump launched his war on Iran six months ago.
On Sunday, Trump said in a social-media post that he would use Venezuelan crude oil to "fill up" the SPR, adding that the process "will begin very shortly." That's after the president announced a deal with Venezuela late Friday, saying the U.S. would help develop 17 of the South American country's oil fields containing 65 billion barrels of proven reserves.
But analysts have expressed doubts about relying on heavy Venezuelan crude for the SPR, which is set up largely to store what's known as light, sweet crude. The "practical mechanism" for using future Venezuelan output to replenish the SPR "is not yet clear, given differences in crude quality and storage requirements," UBS strategists said in a note.
UBS said the U.S.-Venezuela deal is "strategically significant," but added it's unlikely to change the outlook for the oil market in the near term in part because the market's dominant driver is disruptions to the Strait of Hormuz, a key Mideast shipping route. Also, Venezuelan production gains will take years to achieve, and the durability of the deal - legally and politically - is uncertain, they noted.
New York-traded West Texas Intermediate (CL00) and London-traded Brent (BRN00) crude futures each rose more than 2% on Monday, and are poised to end August with gains of 1% and 3%, respectively. Analysts attributed Monday's advance to the U.S. and Iran exchanging fire for the first time in a month.
The average national price for gasoline stands at about $4.08 per gallon in the U.S., up from $3.19 a year ago, according to AAA data.
Claudia Assis contributed.
-Victor Reklaitis