6:21What happened, and do you have a sense of the broader economic impact?
7:35... shutting down, they said, quote, 'The sudden and sustained rise in fuel prices in recent weeks ultimately has left us with no alternative.' Are other industries also at risk of collapse or other major companies due to this energy shock?
It has been another one of those weeks where some very big news stories now feel very much in the rearview mirror. One such story is that Congress finally, by voice vote no less after 76 days, ended the partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. So now TSA agents and the Coast Guard are fully funded. Still unfunded though are the two immigration agencies, ICE and CBP. But the story that's not going away is the impact the war with Iran is having on the global economy. Rising fuel costs were a factor in the shutdown of low-cost carrier Spirit Airlines yesterday, and the sudden shutdown left thousands stranded and some 14,000 plus employees without jobs according to the pilots union. We begin this morning with the director of the White House Economic Council, Kevin Hassett, joins us from Los Angeles. Good early morning to you.
Well, director, President Trump sent a letter to Congress on Friday saying a few things. One, that the conflict with Iran, the ceasefire has been extended. He also said the hostilities have been terminated. He also said the threat posed by Iran remains significant and the force posture will continue to be updated. Then overnight we saw the president said Iran has not yet paid a big enough price for what they've done to humanity. What exactly is the message to the market?
Right. Well, I think the market has been pretty consistent. The fact is that what the president is seeing is that the blockade is working. It's putting an enormous amount of pressure on Iran, and Iran's threats to put mines in the straits have even made it so that humanitarian aid that of course we would let through to Iran, there are a lot of those ship captains that are wary of going to Iranian ports because they're worried about where the Iranians have put the mines. And so, you know, I go down to the Sit Room many times a week and get briefed on what's going on in Iran, and they're an economy that's really on the precipice of extreme calamity. They are having a hyperinflation. They're starting to have hunger. The bottom line is that the pressure on the great American people because of these people who are like really intent on American and Israeli destruction with their nuclear weapons are still in power. One last thing, Margaret. I don't know if you noticed, but the UN human rights folks came out this week condemning Iran because they're killing people who are trying to stand up to this regime that's potentially, you know, causing starvation and even famine.
Iran shut down the straits. Iran shut down the straits, right? And the only ones they were letting through were Iranian ships, and President Trump didn't think that was acceptable.
You know what, I don't know what the definition of war is when we're not shooting and we're negotiating and they're under a lot of pressure. There's no reason I think right now to do anything other than what we're doing. The fact is that that regime has destroyed the country. Let me put it in perspective. In 1978, before the Ayatollah came in, then the per capita GDP in Iran was about the same as for Japan and Italy. Now it's about the same as for Honduras. So they've run that country into the ground, and that's before the straits were closed. And so it's really, really a country that's on the rocks.
Sure. And we're negotiating with them. But so we're going into week 10. I'm wondering what economic modeling you have done here because the president had originally said the war was going to last four to six weeks. We are now at the national average gas price of $4.45 a gallon. Can we end the conflict without taking back the Strait of Hormuz?
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Hassett, K. (2026, May 3). Kevin Hassett: Energy shocks will "affect profits for the airlines for the next quarter or so" [Interview transcript]. Face the Nation. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/881394/
MLA
Kevin Hassett. "Kevin Hassett: Energy shocks will "affect profits for the airlines for the next quarter or so"." Face the Nation, 3 May. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/881394/.
BibTeX
@misc{hassett2026_881394,
author = {Kevin Hassett},
title = {Kevin Hassett: Energy shocks will "affect profits for the airlines for the next quarter or so"},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, Face the Nation. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {may},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/881394/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
