What you pay at the pump has little to do with politics

Depending on the state of the economy, many Americans like to thank or blame politicians. The same can be true for gas prices. GasBuddy’s Patrick De Haan joined TheStreet to talk about why, whichever side of the aisle you're on, what you pay at the pump is never really about politics.

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Full Video Transcript Below:

J.D. DURKIN: Patrick one thing I really appreciate about your presence on social media is that it appears to me you're not afraid to correct the record or public commentary, especially when politics gets drawn into this conversation. This is an election year. If you're willing to, help us separate fact from fiction, people will say gas prices are going high. That's Joe Biden's fault. Others will say, well, gas prices are coming down. That's because of Joe Biden. Help us actually understand where politics, where the rubber meets the road on this issue so that people don't get confused when they hear very loud political advocates use the topic that you cover so well as either a support or a cudgel against a particular political candidate.

PATRICK DE HAAN: Well, if you're going to be an analyst of a market, you really can't include a political bias. You wouldn't be a good analyst if you're just one sided. And so when it comes to this issue, you're right, both sides of the political spectrum are going to pull into misinformation to either take credit or to blame another political party for what's happening at the pump. But a politician is so weak when it comes to global fundamentals. That is the balance of supply and demand. Now, a president may have some subtle input here and there, and that can vary depending on the type of issue. But overall, the market is going to do what. It's going to do, and politicians are essentially powerless to have some sort of control over those global fundamentals like supply and demand. 

So, you know, you're going to hear this coming fall probably, you know, Joe Biden's responsible for the $5 price we saw in 2022. But those same infomercials won't mention Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The same time you'll probably hear the left side have kind of the opposite, thanking Biden for lower gas prices when it's really a rise, a function of a rise in US oil production and investment in refineries globally. So there's going to be a lot of this political information or misinformation that's going to be really hard for an average person who's not an analyst to be able to dissect it and to properly attribute things to either fundamentals or, in the small case, politicians.