Trump Is Promising Cheap Gas. Too Bad Getting It Would Likely Crash The Economy.

Donald Trump has taken to promising that he will lower gasoline and energy prices by more than half in his first year back in office ― a pledge that, if carried out, would result in the destruction of the U.S. oil industry followed by a deep recession, experts said.

“Energy costs, all of it, air conditioning, heating, all of it, including gasoline, will drop by more than 50% within the first 12 months,” Trump promised again on Monday in Pennsylvania in what his campaign billed as an economic policy speech. “Your bill will be less than half.”

The problem, industry experts explained, is that energy is bought and sold in a global market, and the only way that gasoline could go from $3.40 a gallon now down to $1.70 a gallon is for crude oil prices to fall from $75 a barrel to between $20 and $30 a barrel. And at those lower prices, U.S. oil producers would not be able to break even.

“That would bankrupt the U.S. industry. And the entire U.S. industry would shut down before that happened,” said one oil executive with decades of experience who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing Trump and his campaign. “It’s classic Trump. He speaks hyperbolically without making any common sense.”

The coup-attempting former president, now also a convicted felon, has not provided any details about how he would lower gas prices so dramatically, other than his “Drill, baby, drill” mantra, which he offers as virtually the sole mechanism for his entire economic policy.

His campaign did not respond to HuffPost queries about whether Trump consulted with any actual oil industry leaders before issuing his cheap-energy promise.

Energy industry insiders said they doubt that he did because people with expertise would have told him that