President Biden; gas prices in San Francisco, California on May 20, 2022
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images; Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
- Target’s CEO rejected the idea of a gas tax holiday a day after President Biden floated the idea.
- The move would serve as “a mini stimulus” and only “fuel the demand,” Brian Cornell said.
- US production and refining are stretched, raising prices as summer travel is in full swing.
With US gas prices hovering around $5 per gallon, Target CEO Brian Cornell says a federal gas tax holiday is the wrong kind of discount.
“It’s only going to fuel the demand,” Cornell told the Economic Club of New York on Tuesday, a day after President Joe Biden floated the idea of suspending the 18.4-cent-per-gallon charge.
“It’s doing nothing to increase supply, so that’s a temporary, almost a mini stimulus,” he added, according to Yahoo News.
US production has been slow to ramp up following the disruption of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and refiners have been running at capacity trying to meet insatiable demand for not just gasoline, but diesel and jet fuel too.
“It’s time to fundamentally change the supply and demand curves for fuel and transportation,” Cornell said.
The Biden Administration released roughly 50 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and has tried unsuccessfully to cajole producers to increase output, but prices have continued ticking up.
“Increasing demand is not going to help lower those prices over the long term,” Cornell said.
