When President Biden visits Saudi Arabia next month, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm believes he will meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin-Salman to discuss gas prices.
‘I think he’ll meet with the Saudi crown prince,’ Granholm said on CNN’s State of the Union, after President Biden stated he wouldn’t meet with the crown prince a few days ago.
Granholm insists on a meeting, but her assurance is just the latest in a string of contradictory statements about the trip.
‘I’m not going to meet with MBS. I’m going to an international meeting and he’s going to be part of it,’ Biden told reporters Friday at the White House before he left to spend the weekend in Rehoboth Beach, Del.
Biden will be in Jeddah in mid-July to attend a meeting of the GCC plus 3 summit to talk oil production. While there he will meet with the aging Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud.
The White House has noted that Salman’s team, which includes his son and heir MBS, will simply be a part of that meeting. MBS will also be a part of the GCC plus 3 summit, which Saudi chairs.
But the kingdom said that MBS and Biden would be meeting unilaterally.
‘The crown prince and President Biden will hold official talks that will focus on various areas of bilateral cooperation and joint efforts to address regional and global challenges,’ the country said in a statement when Biden’s trip was announced.
On Tuesday when it was announced that he would travel to Saudi Arabia, the world’s second largest holder of petroleum reserves, a White House official told reporters in a briefing call that Biden did in fact plan to meet with the crown prince.
But the White House has downplayed the meeting with MBS, saying the president will meet with King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and that the crown prince will be a part of that.
‘Yes, we can expect the president to see the Crown Prince as well,’ White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Tuesday.
Saudi Arabia, in its statement on the trip, said Biden and MBS would meet.
‘The crown prince and President Biden will hold official talks that will focus on various areas of bilateral cooperation and joint efforts to address regional and global challenges,’ the statement said.
But White House deputy spokesman John Kirby said Biden will meet with the King and the meeting with MBS will be a part of that.
‘He’s going to meet bilaterally with King Salman and King Salman’s team and the crown prince is part of that team. I suspect he’ll see the crown prince in the context of the meetings. He’s grateful for the king’s willingness to host the GCC plus three. He’s looking forward to, again, a wide scope of discussions,’ he said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.
The trip comes as gas prices in the United States continue to surge, a key domestic issue Biden hopes to tackle going into November’s midterm election.
Over the weekend, the national average for a gallon of gas reached $5 for the first time in American history.
Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest producer of oil, and as a key member of OPEC plays a large part in setting oil prices worldwide.
And in another move to address record gas prices, a federal gas tax holiday is ‘certainly worth considering’ to lower gas prices, Treasury Sec. Janet Yellen told ABC’s ‘This Week’ on Sunday morning.
Average gas prices breached $5 per gallon last week for the first time ever last and have dipped slightly to $4.98 as of Sunday.
Asked by host George Stephanopoulos whether a gas tax holiday was a potential short-term solution, Yellen replied: ‘President Biden wants to do anything he possibly can to help consumers. Gas prices have risen a great deal and it’s clearly burdening households.’
‘He stands ready to work with Congress and that’s an idea that certainly worth considering,’ she added.
Yellen stated once more that inflation is ‘unacceptably high,’ with prices up 8.6 percent this May over last, but she did not believe a recession was ‘inevitable.’
According to a Conference Board survey released last week, three-quarters of CEOs worldwide foresee a global recession within the next 12 to 18 months as a result of Russia’s horrific war in Ukraine.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has cautioned that the American economy will suffer still more damage before inflation returns to its 41-year high.
In a bid to control inflation, the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates by 0.75 percent on Wednesday, the largest increase since 1994. Last month, Powell cautioned that further rate hikes are anticipated in the near future.
‘Inflation has obviously surprised to the upside over the past year, and further surprises could be in store. We therefore will need to be nimble in responding to incoming data,’ he said.
‘We think that the public generally sees us as as very likely to be successful in getting inflation down to 2 percent. and that’s critical,’ he noted. ‘It will take some time to get inflation back down but we will do that.’
Even within his own party, Biden has come under increasing pressure to suspend the federal gas tax, which is currently 18.3 cents per gallon, in order to drive down prices.
According to The Hill, Democratic Rep. Earl Blumenauer addressed a letter to President Biden this week advising him against taking such a step.
According to the Oregon member, doing so would result in a “massive gap” in the infrastructure and transportation budget. According to financial modeling from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, suspending the federal gas tax for the remainder of the fiscal year would leave the Highway Transportation Fund $20 billion short.
Energy Sec. Jennifer Granholm expressed hesitancy about suspending the gas tax on CNN Sunday. ‘Part of the challenge with the gas tax, of course, is that it funds the roads. And we just did a big infrastructure bill to help fund the roads.’
Some states, such as Maryland, Georgia, and New York, have already moved to remove their gas taxes. Some believe that Biden’s appeal for other states to do the same would be a beneficial move by the White House to help reduce strain on Americans’ wallets.
Biden’s economic team has considered a gas tax holiday and is scheduled to meet again later this week.
Biden has already depleted the Strategic Petroleum Reserves, which had no influence on gas prices. Last week, he sent a letter to the CEOs of the country’s biggest petroleum companies, threatening to exercise his “emergency power” if they did not act to decrease prices.
Biden said in a letter to Exxon that the differential ‘of more than 15% at the pump is the result of historically high profit margins for refining oil into gasoline, diesel, and other refined products,’ according to Axios.
‘Since the beginning of the year, refiners’ margins for refining gasoline and diesel have tripled, and are currently at their highest levels ever recorded,’ he added in the letter to Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods.
‘Government tools and emergency authorities to increase refinery capacity and output in the near term, and to ensure that every region of this country is appropriately supplied,’ he wrote. ‘Already, I have invoked emergency powers to execute the largest Strategic Petroleum Reserve release in history, expand access to E15 (gasoline with 15% ethanol), and authorize the use of the Defense Production Act to provide reliable inputs into energy production.’
‘I am prepared to use all tools at my disposal, as appropriate, to address barriers to providing Americans affordable, secure energy supply,’ he added.
While the White House has consistently stated that it is open to suggestions on how to reduce rising tax rates, Biden’s Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo took a more defeatist stance this week, saying there was little the administration could do to help.
‘Unfortunately, that is the brutal reality,’ Raimondo told CNN when asked what Biden can do.
‘This is, in large part, caused by Putin’s aggression,’ Raimondo added. ‘You know, since Putin moved troops to the border of Ukraine, gas prices have gone up over $1.40 a gallon, and the President is asking for Congress and others for potential ideas.’
‘But as you say, the reality is that there isn’t very much more to be done,’ she said.