President Trump heads into Thursday’s high-stakes summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping holding a card that could bring relief to Americans hammered by $4.47-a-gallon gas — and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast says the key is getting China to stop fueling Iran’s chaos in the Strait of Hormuz.
Mast told Fox News Digital that China bears direct responsibility for the oil-price surge crushing family budgets nationwide.
“If President Trump can secure that China will stop arming Iran, who is trying to destabilize this key oil route through the globe, then the president will have done something very important for affordability, especially in terms of global crude prices, which equal prices at the pump here in the United States of America.”
Gas prices have climbed more than 30 cents since September 3, with the national average now sitting at $4.47 per gallon — a flashpoint issue heading into November’s midterm elections. Both parties are blaming each other for policies driving up costs, but Mast argues China is the number one actor working to raise those prices through its military support of Iran and Russia.
The ongoing U.S. conflict with Iran has effectively choked off normal traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that carries a massive share of global oil shipments. China’s willingness to arm Tehran — enabling Iran’s attacks on civilian merchant vessels — has created the instability sending crude prices soaring.
“China is arming Iran so that Iran can indiscriminately attack civilians moving through the strait,” Mast said. “That is the fundamental difference about what China is doing… the United States, looking to protect all of those resources going through there, the civilians going on the ships through there and the civilians across all of the countries throughout the Gulf.”
Over the last two months, Trump moved over a billion barrels of oil and more than 2,000 civilian merchant ships through the Strait of Hormuz despite Iranian threats, Mast noted. Iran has moved nothing — but global oil markets still react to the instability China helps create.
Thursday’s meeting marks Trump’s third summit with Xi this term and Xi’s first visit to the U.S. since Trump returned to the White House last year. The commander-in-chief is walking into the room with serious leverage: the recently signed Russia-Iran sanctions bill — named after the late Sen. Lindsey Graham — which gives Trump the authority to hammer Beijing’s trade with crushing penalties.
“China is the number one target for that sanctions bill,” Mast said. “It would affect, has the potential to affect, a great deal of trade if President Trump chooses not to waive some of his sanction authorities that he’s given in that bill.”
Cost of living and affordability are fast becoming the top issues in the November midterms. If Trump can extract a commitment from Xi to cut off Iran’s weapons supply, he’ll have delivered real relief to Americans filling up their tanks — and exposed China’s role in the pain families are feeling every time they pull into a gas station.
