Trump haunts OPEC with demand for lower oil and gas prices

President Trump will haunt this weekend’s OPEC meeting, as the oil cartel tries to head off his increasingly desperate prodding to boost oil production to keep prices from rising ahead of the U.S. midterm elections.

The current global oil price is hovering around $80 a barrel for the first time since May, as investors bet that OPEC will be unable to plug a growing loss of oil from Iran because of Trump’s sanctions on the country. U.S. gasoline prices, influenced heavily by the world oil price, have stayed steady at about $2.85 on average over recent weeks. But Trump appears to be hedging against that changing. He engaged in Twitter diplomacy on Thursday, demanding that “the OPEC monopoly must get prices down now!”