How Trump will decide New Zealand’s election

The road to the Beehive now runs through the Strait of Hormuz — and the Oval Office.

  When Christopher Luxon announced the election for Saturday 7 November, he knew exactly what sat four days earlier on the calendar: the US midterms, on Tuesday 3 November.

  Whichever way Congress swings, it is what Donald Trump does in the weeks beforehand that will shape how New Zealanders feel walking into their own polling booths.

  Luxon framed the choice as who could govern in “a very volatile and uncertain world”. He wasn’t wrong. He may also have been counting on it.

  Trump has told supporters plainly that if Republicans lose the House, “I’ll get impeached”. His approval is stuck at 33 per cent — the lowest of his political career — dragged down by a cost of living crisis, an unpopular war with Iran, and American petrol prices up nearly a dollar a gallon in a year.

  Sound familiar?

  New Zealanders have lived the same war at the same pump. When the US and Israel struck Iran in late February, fuel prices here recorded their largest monthly rise since monthly records began in 2011. 91 octane went above $3.60; on Waiheke Island it broke $4 a litre and locals protested.

  In February, the average weekly family fill-up cost about $114. By April, $157.

  Now, three months out from the election, prices are drifting down — a national average around $3, with the cheapest stations under $2.70. But here is the inexplicable part: the leap up has never been fully pushed back down. Fuel company margins are running at almost twice their pre-war levels, and refining spreads have more than tripled. The government, as I have written, has watched and shrugged.

  Why would it lean on the oil companies? National, ACT and New Zealand First reinstated oil exploration permits — “Drill, drill, drill!” as Shane Jones puts it — and the industry knows exactly what a Labour-Greens government would bring back. Nobody in this arrangement wants a fight.

  Meanwhile in Washington, the war has become a straight electoral liability. In July the House voted 214–208 to direct Trump to end it, four Republicans crossing the floor. Eighty per cent of Americans expect the war to drag on. Republican congressmen understand that every week of $4 gas brings them a week closer to losing their seats.

  Trump’s answer has been to rig the map instead, directing Texas to redraw its congressional districts mid-decade to manufacture five extra Republican seats. But gerrymandering can only go so far.

  Our government understands the instinct. The Electoral Amendment Act banned prisoners from voting and closed enrolment 13 days before election day — changes the Attorney-General found inconsistent with the Bill of Rights. Voter suppression can only go so far too.

  Which leaves the war itself. And here is the weird part: the war is whatever Trump says it is. He declared it “very complete” back in March. He has won it countless times since. He agreed a ceasefire in April, resumed strikes in July, and threatened “economic warfare” in August. Bombing Iran to stop a nuclear programme is the curio — the same trigger, you may recall, as the weapons of mass destruction never found in Iraq.

  The US does not depend on Middle East oil. Neither, directly, does New Zealand — we buy refined fuel from Asian refineries. What both countries import is the price.

  So follow the logic. Trump needs cheap petrol by 3 November. He can produce it with a phone call. Stop the war, reopen the strait, and crude plummets. American gas falls before the midterms — and New Zealand petrol falls before 7 November, handing the government a late, unearned cost of living win.

  It would be exactly that cynical. But then, how the prices went up in the first place was just as cynical.

  Labour has been sleepwalking towards power on little more than the cost of living, offering small policy and smaller targets. A 40-cent fall at the pump in October would deflate that strategy overnight.

What goes up can come down — and this election, the hand on the pump is in the Oval Office.