Trump Tells Exxon and Chevron They Made 'Too Much Money' and Orders Them to Cut Pump Prices

President Trump used an Oval Office executive order signing on Monday to deliver an unusually direct warning to the American oil industry: cut the price at the pump, or answer for the profits.

"But they made too much money, too much money," Trump said. "Chevron, too much money. Exxon Mobil, too much. Too much money." He went on to describe one producer's results as a windfall that ought to be returned. "When you look at one company, where they made 12 times what they made the year before, they're going to give some of that back to the public, and they better cut the retail price." He added: "I'll say it loud and clear: I'm not happy about it."

The comments extended a line of attack Trump had opened a day earlier, when he criticized Chevron Chief Executive Mike Wirth by name during a Fox News interview. It is a striking posture for an administration that has spent eighteen months positioning itself as the most production-friendly White House in decades, and it reflects the political arithmetic of an election year in which fuel costs have become the most visible measure of the war's cost to households.

American drivers are paying above $4 a gallon, up from roughly $3 before the conflict with Iran began in late February. The increase traces to the disruption of crude flows through the Strait of Hormuz, the channel through which roughly a fifth of the world's seaborne oil moves. Iranian interference with shipping through the strait removed a large volume of supply from the market and pushed benchmark prices sharply higher, and refiners' margins expanded along with them.

Monday brought the first sustained relief in weeks. Brent crude fell more than 4% to roughly $84 a barrel after Trump said he had called off a planned bombing campaign against Iranian energy infrastructure and predicted an imminent agreement. Trump told reporters that prices would "drop through the floor" once the conflict ends.

The economics of the pump complicate his demand. Retail gasoline prices track crude with a lag that typically runs several weeks, because the fuel sold today was refined from crude bought earlier at higher prices — the pattern industry analysts describe as rising like a rocket and falling like a feather. Most U.S. filling stations are also franchised or independently owned rather than operated by the integrated majors, which limits how directly Exxon or Chevron can set the number on the sign.

Neither company responded publicly to the president's remarks on Monday. Exxon and Chevron reported combined second-quarter earnings of $26.5 billion, results driven by exactly the wartime crude prices Trump is now asking them to give back.