Windfall profits

Donald Trump has proven once again who he really represents, and it sure isn’t the average family in America. Just last week, as the national average gas price was inching closer to $5 a gallon, Trump spilled the beans on Truth Social, stating: “The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money.”
By “we,” of course, Trump doesn’t mean northern Minnesota families who have watched the price of heating oil go through the roof. He doesn’t mean our area school districts, already struggling financially, which now are paying much more to bus our students. He doesn’t mean area loggers who can barely afford to operate as diesel prices skyrocket. He doesn’t mean area workers who have watched as more of their paychecks disappear just getting to the job.
By “we,” he means his fellow billionaires, the top CEOs and major shareholders in the big oil companies, who are reaping billions of dollars in windfall profits every week from Donald Trump’s decision to wage an ill-considered war in the Middle East.
Analysts at Oil Change International, or OCI, estimate the windfall amounts to about $280 million every single day, just from crude oil, before counting liquified natural gas and other refined fuels.
And that windfall will continue even if the Strait of Hormuz is eventually reopened, likely exceeding $100 billion, according to OCI. That’s on top of the already enormous profits of the oil industry. That money is flowing, right now, into the pockets of the same industry executives and investors who filled Trump’s political coffers. This isn’t a coincidence. It’s a business model, and it is corrupt beyond belief.
We saw the same playbook in 2022 when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered a global cost-of-living crisis while the five largest oil companies made nearly $200 billion in profits in a single year.
An analysis of the distribution of those profits found that U.S.-based firms pocketed the largest share, and the richest Americans overwhelmingly benefitted from the windfall. Working people paid at the pump. Shareholders collected fat dividends. Washington did nothing to change that dynamic, so here we are again.
Congress has the power — and the obligation — to act. A windfall profits tax on the oil industry is not a radical idea. It is a straightforward tool of democratic accountability and it’s been used before. When an industry profits not through investment, innovation, or efficiency, but through geopolitical chaos that our own government itself created, the public has every right to reclaim a fair share of those gains. This industry’s price hikes are no different than a retailer who price-gouges in the wake of a weather disaster. Yet the oil industry has so much clout in a Washington run by Republicans that those in power simply look the other way.
That should end today. Republicans won’t fight for a windfall profits tax. The Democrats should.
We’ve already been told that the war in Iran will cost taxpayers more than $25 billion. Let the oil industry pay that tab since they’re the ones reaping the financial benefits, at the expense of the rest of us.
Don’t be fooled by industry claims that a windfall profits tax will discourage investment in new production.
A well-designed windfall profits tax — one that targets extraordinary profits above a defined threshold, triggered specifically by price spikes tied to geopolitical events — would do nothing to dampen long-term production decisions. It would, however, send a clear message that American blood and American wallets are not profit centers for the oil lobby.
Trump has said he can end the war at any time. If that’s true, and if he genuinely cares about the Americans who drive to work and heat their homes and run their small businesses on thin margins, then he should do so. But if he won’t end it, Congress must step in —to ensure that the costs of this war of choice are not borne by the people least able to absorb them while the people most connected to the president— the only people Trump seems to actually care about— sit and count their winnings.
The president posted that “we” are making a lot of money. That’s a window into his real thinking, and it’s shockingly out of touch.
Real Americans are frustrated that we are paying for a war we don’t support with gas prices we were explicitly promised would never come back, at least under this president. The least Congress can do is make sure the ones who actually ARE making big money — the oil executives and well-heeled donors, i.e. the Epstein Class — give some of it back.