President Donald Trump's illegal war with Iran has achieved a significant milestone, but it's not one that many US voters will likely appreciate. Data published by the American Automobile Association (AAA) on Monday show that the average price for gas in the US now stands at $4.08 per gallon, or $0.90 per gallon more than the average…
Page F2From§Eachthe milkman edition — 4 September 2026
Adviser grades economy a B on a report card showing $4 gas, mortgage rates highest in a year.
As it ran on the front
Stephen Moore went on television this week and gave the U.S. economy a B. Not a B-minus, not an incomplete pending further data. A B, the grade you give a kid who did the reading most nights and showed effort on the group project. Somewhere a teacher is grading on a curve nobody asked for.
Start with the transcript, because the receipts arrived the same week as the grade, not after it. Gas is running above $4 a gallon. That figure did not drift up on its own; the American Automobile Association clocked it there in late August, ninety cents more per gallon than a year earlier, and noted gas usually eases in summer and did not this time, because oil prices stayed elevated through the month. A B grade sat down at a table already set with that number.…
…(cont) The 30-year mortgage rate did the same thing to the other side of the ledger. Freddie Mac reported it Thursday at 6.71 percent, up from 6.66 percent the week before, the highest mark in more than a year. That is not a rounding error for a family shopping for a house; it is the difference between a monthly payment they could plan around and one they can't. The report card doesn't average that out against the grader's confidence. It just sits there, dated, filed, public.
There was an attempt to address at least one of these numbers before voters go to the polls. Late in August, the plan on the table was to pause tariffs on imported ground beef, sold as a way to knock the price down by a quarter before the midterms. The economic analysis attached to that same plan said the 25 percent figure was unrealistic and would likely hurt the domestic producers it claimed to help. So the fix for one grocery-aisle number arrived with its own asterisk, filed the same week as the B.
None of this requires assigning a motive to the man holding the marker. A B is an assessment, not a crime; grading scales vary by classroom, and nobody here is grading the grader. What can be reconciled is simpler: the gallon costs what AAA says it costs, the mortgage costs what Freddie Mac says it costs, and the beef relief comes with a note from the people who ran the math. Compare the report card to the transcript, hon, and see which one the family in the driveway is actually paying.
“A guy tells you the economy's a B while you're standing at the pump watching four bucks disappear a gallon at a time — that's not an assessment, that's a hostage situation with a grading rubric. They'll pause the tariff on your burger meat for the cameras and let their own economists tell you the discount's fake, but somehow that never makes it into the segment. The report card's public record, Freddie Mac and AAA both filed it same week as the B — check the transcript against the receipt yourself.”
“Look, a B is a strong grade, historically speaking — presidents would kill for a B in this economy, that's just — that's a fact. The gas thing, the mortgage thing, sure, those are numbers, but numbers without context are just, they're just numbers, and context is what advisers are for. Did I just say the grade needs an adviser to explain it? That's not — that came out wrong.”
The receipts
The 30-year mortgage rate reached its highest mark in more than a year Thursday, portending lower purchasing power for prospective homebuyers. The benchmark 30-year fixed mortgage rate is 6.71 percent this week, up from 6.66 percent a week ago, Freddie Mac reported Thursday. That is the highest point for the 30-year rate since the week...
Former President Trump's proposal to temporarily pause tariffs on imported ground beef aims to lower prices before the midterm elections, despite economic analysis suggesting the 25 percent price reduction claim is unrealistic and…
As the midterms draw closer, mortgage rates have hit a new high for 2026, and gas prices are above $4 per gallon. Former Trump economic adviser Stephen Moore joins "The Takeout" to assess the state of the U.S. economy.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.