The Price of Hot Wind on Paper

I was sitting in a Nevada gas station, watching the numbers climb on the pump like a man scaling a ladder he couldn’t afford, when a letter blew in from Washington. Not literally, letters from Washington never travel that honestly, but the contents arrived just the same.

Senator Catherine Cortez Masto has written to President Trump, urging him not to tax oil from our friends abroad. Now, I have always believed a friend is a person who sells you something you need at a price you can afford.

By that definition, Norway is a better friend than most cousins.

The Senator warns that tariffs might raise prices. It is a rare moment in politics when someone admits that taxes do, in fact, cost money.

It is a revelation so pure it ought to be bottled and sold, though I expect it would be taxed before it reached the shelf. She points out that countries like Canada, Japan, and South Korea supply us with energy.

It is true.

We import from them, export to them, argue with them, and occasionally thank them, though never in that order. It is a fine arrangement, like borrowing your neighbor’s shovel and returning it with a lecture.

But, the matter grows curious when the Senator blames high gas prices on Mr. Trump’s foreign adventures while simultaneously pleading that he not interfere with foreign oil. It is a delicate position: the President is both too involved and not involved correctly.

It reminds me of a woman who complains the rain is too wet but insists it drops on her neighbor’s roof. Now, tariffs are a simple thing in theory.

You tax foreign goods, and the foreigner pays it. That is how it is supposed to work.

However, the bill can sneak back home and present itself to the American consumer with a polite cough. It is not economics so much as boomerang etiquette.

Still, there is another side that the letter does not dwell on. A nation that cannot fuel itself is like a lantern that depends on the kindness of passing strangers.

It will burn bright right up until it doesn’t. One might argue that producing more at home, rather than pleading with Norway to keep the pumps full, is a sturdier sort of independence.

But that notion is unfashionable in certain circles, where self-reliance is an antique curiosity, as well as a butter churn or common sense.

The Senator fears higher prices, and the public shares her fear. The difference is that the public pays for it.

In the end, the whole affair is a grand performance: investigations, letters, warnings, and speeches, all conducted while the numbers on the pump continue their steady ascent, untroubled by rhetoric. Gasoline, unlike politicians, does not respond to persuasion.

As I finished fueling, I noticed the total had reached a figure usually reserved for small inheritances. I paid it, of course.

The pump does not accept letters to the President.