If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing big.

That’s Donald Trump’s mantra, and we’ve seen him apply it to dramatic — and often disastrous — effect over the 10 years he’s spent dominating US politics.

Take the 2020 election, for example. It was worth disputing, Trump judged, and as political disputation goes, armed insurrection is as big as it gets. So, Trump summoned every Cracker Barrel parking lot in America to D.C. (What happened next is those people’s fault, not Trump’s. All he did was tell everybody to “fight like hell.”)

That speaks to one of the more darkly amusing aspects of Trump’s penchant for grandiosity: It doesn’t apply exclusively to good things. Bad things must be done “bigly” too, so I suppose congratulations are in order: Trump was on track to own history’s largest monthly increase in the price of oil.

As the simple figure below shows, Brent was up ~50% for March with just a day and a half left in the month.

Shades of Rusty and Clark Griswold. “Gee dad, you must’ve jumped this thing about 50 yards.” “Eh, it’s nothing to be proud of Rusty… Fiftyyy yards.”

At one point Monday, Brent approached $117 and average gas prices in America hit $3.99. That’s bad news for Griswold-style family road trips.

“For families already pinched by higher costs of living, the bloated prices at the pump have added another layer of financial pressure, prompting many to at least reconsider their spring break plans or make trip adjustments,” The New York Times wrote, in a generic piece published Sunday and updated early Monday morning as oil prices rose further. “Fearing a prolonged period of elevated pric[es], many are adopting a wait-and-see approach to summer travel.”

Scott Bessent on Monday tried to quell fears. “The US is going to retake control of the straits over time,” he told Fox News. “There will be freedom of navigation, whether through US escorts or a multinational escort.”

The figure above, from BMO’s Ian Lyngen, gives you a sense of how acute the situation was in the world’s most important oil chokepoint headed into the weekend.

“Even when including the eight ships allowed to cross [last] week, the average flow of traffic through the passage has dropped to less than one ship per day,” Lyngen remarked. “By way of comparison, between 2020-2025, the Strait saw an average of 94 daily crossings.”

Iran allowed more ships safe transit over the past 48 hours, including a pair of Chinese ships which were denied passage last week, but for nervous markets, Bessent’s “freedom of navigation” seems a distant prospect.

And for lower-income Americans paying through the nose at the pump, every fillup’s now a financial event. Indeed, a lot of consumers are probably channeling their 17-year-old, allowance-constrained selves: “Just give me $10 on three.”

“The downside risks from higher gas prices for growth are apparent, particularly for lower-income households that have felt the strain of the emerging ‘K-shaped’ economy,” Lyngen went on, in the same note mentioned above. “The extension of conflict increases the risk that consumers need to rotate away from spending in other sectors to fund rising fuel costs, thereby undermining real growth.”