By Harshit
WASHINGTON, MARCH 13, 2026 — Two weeks into a war nobody voted for, the American economy is starting to show the strain. Oil crossed $100 a barrel Thursday for the first time since 2022. Wall Street posted its worst single session of the year. Job losses are mounting. And the man who promised the “roaring economy” is watching his most important numbers turn against him.
It was, by any measure, a brutal day for the U.S. economy.
Oil Crosses $100 — A Psychological Threshold
The number that rattled markets most on Thursday wasn’t on Wall Street. It was at the pump — and in the futures pits. Brent crude settled at $100.46 per barrel, its first close above $100 since August 2022, after Iran’s newly appointed Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei declared the Strait of Hormuz would remain shut. West Texas Intermediate surged 9.7% to $95.73 per barrel.
The move erased any relief traders had felt earlier in the week when U.S. military operations destroyed Iranian minelayers near the strait. Markets had briefly hoped the waterway — through which 20% of the world’s oil flows — might reopen soon. Khamenei’s declaration shut that hope down in a single sentence.
The International Energy Agency announced a coordinated release of 400 million barrels from global strategic reserves — a record intervention designed to cool prices. Markets shrugged. When the strait is closed and the new supreme leader says it stays closed, no reserve release changes that arithmetic.
Wall Street’s Worst Day of 2026
The oil shock rippled through every corner of the U.S. financial system. The S&P 500 fell 1.52% to 6,672.62. The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 739 points, closing below 47,000 for the first time this year. The Nasdaq dropped 1.78%. The 10-year Treasury yield climbed to 4.24% — a five-week high — while a 30-year bond auction drew weak demand, signaling that investors are growing nervous about inflation making a comeback.
The Dow has now fallen 5% over the past month. That’s a sharp reversal for a president who has repeatedly pointed to the stock market as proof of his economic stewardship — and who told the country at the World Economic Forum in January that “the Golden Age of America is upon us.”
The Jobs Picture Darkens
The market rout arrived against an already deteriorating employment backdrop. Friday’s jobs report showed the U.S. economy shed 92,000 jobs in February — a stunning reversal from the 130,000 gains of January that had prompted Trump to post “WOW! The Golden Age of America is upon us!!!” on social media.
The damage ran deeper than the headline number. December’s figures were revised to show a loss of 17,000 jobs — a month that had originally been reported as positive. Without the health care sector, the economy would have shed roughly 202,000 jobs since Trump took office in January 2025. It’s a trend that is becoming difficult to explain away.
Trump’s administration points to productivity gains as evidence of underlying strength — and there is something to that. Business sector labor productivity climbed 2.8% in the fourth quarter of last year. But economists note that productivity gains have not translated into higher wages. Labor’s share of national income fell to its lowest level on record last year, meaning workers are generating more value while capturing less of it.
One Bright Spot — Buried in Old Data
Not everything in Thursday’s economic picture was dark. The U.S. trade deficit narrowed sharply to $54.5 billion in January, beating the $66.6 billion consensus forecast by a wide margin, as exports surged and imports fell. The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow tracker jumped to 2.7% growth on the back of that trade data.
The problem is that January’s trade figures are ancient history now. They captured a snapshot of the American economy before the Iran war began, before oil surged past $100, and before the Strait of Hormuz closed. Economists were blunt: the January trade beat won’t survive contact with February’s reality. The war’s disruption to U.S. import costs and export routes to the Middle East will begin showing up in March data — and the numbers are unlikely to look anything like January’s.
The Political Stakes
Trump built his 2026 political identity around economic confidence. At his State of the Union address less than two weeks ago, he told the country the economy was “roaring like never before.” Since then, the Dow has dropped, jobs have disappeared, gas prices have surged to a national average of $3.54 per gallon, and oil has crossed $100 a barrel.
The midterm elections are eight months away. Every dollar that oil climbs, every job that disappears, and every point the Dow falls makes that contest harder for Republicans to win. The war in Iran may have been launched to project strength. Its economic consequences are projecting something else entirely.
