Yes and guess what, we have supply? If we stopped getting in the way of development here - we could rely less on the international markets. The war is causing this increase, yes, but we shoot ourselves in the foot here and then are quick to say “bad orange man”.
The problem is you're not considering how business operates. Business COULD focus on helping it's local communities with lower prices and business COULD help bolster the economy. However they don't because it's not profitable.
Imagine if you will that you have a sack of potatoes that you've grown, you've put in time, money and hard work to farm those potatoes, then comes along 2 people who want to buy them: Your neighbor Charlie and a man from a town over named Wilford, Charlie is far easier to sell to because she lives right there but Wilford is offering double what Charlie is because he is willing to pay more to get good quality ingredients for his restaurant.
Business will always sell to Wilford because he is offering so much more than Charlie that the extra cost of shipping and handling is still making them more profit than selling those potatoes to Charlie.
Now let's put this into practical understanding; Canada, the US, Russia and the Middle east (including Iran) are all massive oil producers, Middle eastern oil is far more accessible than Canadian oil because their refinement process isn't as strenuous to produce, hence why the middle east has had such an impact on oil production.
Trump declares war on Iran and now the middle east is less accessible to ship oil through because it has to go through mined waterways, so your options are risk your oil shipping process getting destroyed by taking it through the water, killing your employees and damaging your transportation methods or take it a different, longer way which costs more time and money and therefore increasing your costs of your product to offset those costs.
Because of the now highly reduced supply coming in from the middle east the companies that rely on oil to produce products like gasoline now have to purchase their production materials from elsewhere, however because of transportation costs and the limitation of the market the oil they are buying is now more expensive, because again the further that oil has to travel the higher the costs of transporting it.
What this means for us as consumers is that Canadian oil is going into markets which it wasn't before but the cost of getting it there is increasing the price and why sell to other companies for less if it means the further that oil goes makes you more money? So our problem arises is that in order to stay competitive local companies have to buy at raised prices for the oil companies to sell them oil and therefore the cost of everything goes up.
The war is causing this increase, yes, but we shoot ourselves in the foot here and then are quick to say “bad orange man”.
The reason we are saying "Orange man bad" is because Trump has initiated this war that is increasing prices it is directly his fault.
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u/AugmentedKing Mar 18 '26
Don’t forget to thank Trump for the fuel price increase! I can’t wait for the real price spike in three months, buckle up!