Just 50 cents to go. 50 more cents and Donald Trump will beat Joe Biden’s record for US gas prices, which neared $4.55 a gallon Wednesday.

The record’s $5.01, “achieved” in June of 2022, when headline US inflation sported a nine-handle and University of Michigan sentiment hit what, to that point, was a record low. That month, the Fed delivered the first in a series of super-sized 75bps rate hikes.

As more than one US media outlet was keen to note on Wednesday, current prices already constitute records for this time of year.

Note that the final read on University of Michigan sentiment for April was 49.8, below the above-mentioned June 2022 nadir on the marquee measure of household moods. So, Trump doesn’t have to worry about the breaking that dubious record anymore — he’s already done it.

But he presumably wants to avoid the flurry of bad press that’d accompany a new record for pump prices, which is one reason he “paused” a two-day-old naval initiative in the Strait of Hormuz after clashes with the IRGC on Monday.

No sooner had Pete Hegseth and Dan Caine outlined the logistical specifics of Trump’s so-called “Project Freedom” — dozens of warplanes and support aircraft, thousands of troops, drones and so on — than he suspended the campaign at the request, he said, of Asim Munir, Pakistan’s quasi-dictator.

Oil dropped sharply Wednesday, hitting the lowest in three weeks on hopes that Trump will once again choose peace over “freedom” in the conflict with Iran.

The assumption — and Trump was pretty explicit about this — is that by backing away from a plan that would’ve forced the IRGC to fight, Trump’s materially raising the odds of a negotiated settlement.

This is another example of Trump appearing to stumble into (or onto) a decent outcome. In the fleeting period during which it was implemented, “Project Freedom” leapfrogged the blockade on Tehran’s list of grievances.

Now, the Guards can claim they forced Trump to back down, despite the absurdity inherent in calling the abandonment of a half-baked scheme barely 48 hours old a “concession.”

Anyway, Hegseth’s “red, white and blue dome over the Strait,” as he called Project Freedom on Tuesday, is decommissioned, temporarily or not.

Meanwhile, Abbas Araghchi was in Beijing Wednesday, where he met with Wang Yi, Xi’s famously cantankerous foreign affairs minister. That title doesn’t capture the scope of Wang’s remit and portfolio. He’s more than China’s “top diplomat.” He’s a big gun. Like Sergei Lavrov.

Although the Iranian version of the meeting between Araghchi and Wang didn’t mention the Strait, the Chinese readout certainly did.

“The regional situation is currently at a critical juncture between war and peace,” Wang said, of the Mideast, adding that the entire world “shares a common concern about restoring normal and secure passage through the Strait, and China hopes the parties involved will respond as soon as possible to the strong calls from the international community.”

I’ll leave you with a few additional passages from China’s official account of Wang’s chat with Araghchi, which came less than two weeks before Trump’s due in Beijing.

From China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

China believes that achieving a comprehensive ceasefire is urgently necessary, that reopening hostilities would be undesirable, and that persisting with negotiations is especially important. China supports Iran in safeguarding its national sovereignty and security and appreciates Iran’s willingness to seek a political solution through diplomatic means.

On the nuclear issue, China appreciates Iran’s commitment not to develop nuclear weapons, while also believing that Iran has the legitimate right to peacefully use nuclear energy. China maintains that the countries of the Gulf and the Middle East should take their destiny into their own hands, encourages Iran and more Gulf countries to engage in dialogue and achieve good neighborly relations, and supports the establishment by regional countries of a regional peace and security framework based on joint participation, protection of common interests and shared development.