You had a rough week if you were paying attention to the news.
Gas approaching $4. Airports in chaos. A jobs report that somehow lost 92,000 positions. Iran calling our peace plan “maximalist and unreasonable.” Ground troops being discussed. Senate Democrats howling about mission creep.
It’s a lot. Let’s go through it the right way.
Start with the jobs number, because it’s the one people are treating as a harbinger. February shed 92,000 jobs. That’s a bad month. But here’s what CNN didn’t say in the same breath: the February survey was completed before February 28. The Iran war started on February 28. This report contains exactly zero war impact. It’s a pre-war snapshot being used to paint a wartime picture. The March report — which will actually capture the economic effect of the Hormuz closure and oil spike — comes out in five weeks.
Also: 4.4% unemployment. For reference, the 50-year national average is around 5.5-6%. We are below average unemployment in a month that lost jobs. That’s a sentence that belongs in the article. The liberal media outlets also failed to include this factoid.
Gas prices. The national average hit $3.98 this week. That’s real and it stings. The context they didn’t give you: the Biden-era peak was $5.01 per gallon, June 2022. We’re not there. The California $9 figure you’ve seen everywhere is California — a state that adds taxes and mandates to fuel by design. The cause of the spike is clear: the Strait of Hormuz handles 20% of the world’s oil and it’s been disrupted since the war started. That’s a supply disruption, not a structural collapse. There’s a difference, and the difference matters.
Now Iran. The foreign minister went on state TV and said talks “will not happen.” That’s the headline. The body of the story: Iran simultaneously filed a formal counter-proposal — asking for reparations, Strait sovereignty guarantees, and security pledges. You do not file counter-proposals when you’ve walked away from negotiations. You file them when you want different terms. Iran has been doing this dance for forty years. They publicly refuse while their envoys quietly talk through third parties. Secretary Rubio said this week that progress has been made. He knows what’s in the back channels.
Trump extended the Hormuz deadline — again — to April 6 after Iran let 10 oil tankers through the strait as a show of good faith in the negotiations with the president. Oil dropped on the announcement. Markets don’t move on vibes. They’re pricing in the probability that the Strait reopens and fast.
Every major oil supply shock in modern history has resolved. The 1973 OPEC embargo lasted a year. The 1991 Gulf War spike reversed within months after Kuwait was liberated. War-driven disruptions are sharp and short. Structural supply shortages — the ones that grind on for years — look different. They come from depletion, underinvestment, and sanctions that don’t lift. The Hormuz closure is a pressure point, not a structural failure. It unwinds when the Strait reopens.
The airports. Yes, four-hour lines were real. TSA officers were calling out at 40% rates at some hubs. The DHS partial shutdown made it worse. And then: Thursday, the Senate voted unanimously on a funding deal. And even if the House doesn’t ratify the deal, President Trump issued an executive order getting TSA agents paid immediately. This week’s airport crisis has a resolution in progress. It wasn’t ignored — it was fixed.
There is one number that owns the next seven days: April 6.
That’s Trump’s latest deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. He extended it twice. Both extensions moved oil prices lower. Both were deliberate — extension signals negotiation space, which calms markets, which takes political pressure off the administration while Iran decides whether to accept terms.
Iran’s counter-proposal is theater for domestic consumption. Their actual incentive is to reopen the Strait — their economy needs the oil revenue and the trade lanes. The U.S. ask is narrow: reopen Hormuz, then we talk.
If that happens before April 6, oil retreats, gas prices follow within weeks, and the economic story looks completely different by mid-April. Markets currently believe that’s the more likely outcome.
If it doesn’t, Trump has said clearly what comes next. That isn’t a mystery.
The scary week was real. The catastrophe it implies is still optional.
See you next Saturday.