As the president’s approval rating crisis compounded earlier this month, the White House attempted to tout his tax cuts, with Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt claiming on Tax Day that they put “a historic amount of money” into the pockets of the American people. But some Fox Business personalities are pointing out that those gains have been offset by the higher energy costs caused by Trump’s war with Iran.
Reuters reported that increased prices at the gas pump are “eat[ing] most of the larger tax refunds that people are seeing from new tax breaks on tips, Social Security retirement payments, overtime pay, car loan interest and state and local tax bills that were part of last year's Republican-backed tax-cut legislation.” The reporting confirms that the bump in gasoline costs for Americans exceeds even the highest estimates for average tax refund increases.
On Fox News, Jessica Tarlov, the Democratic co-host of Fox’s panel show The Five, noted that the tax returns were being wiped out by the gasoline price increase, noting, “Kellyanne brings up the tax refund, the $375 on average that you got back, which is compared to the $740 extra that you're going to pay at the pump because of the increase in gas prices.”
On Fox Business, many pundits are making the same point, even if reluctantly.