WSJ What’s News - U.S. Gas Prices Top $4 a Gallon

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

A.M. Edition for Mar. 31. Regular unleaded gasoline crosses the $4 a gallon threshold for the first time since August 2022, and is now up more than a dollar since the start of the war with Iran. Plus, with higher energy costs and the worst quarter for stocks in four years, WSJ markets reporter Sam Goldfarb discusses why bonds aren’t proving to be the safe havens many investors hoped for. And Washington moves to tax millionaires, as the tax divide between blue states and red states widens. Luke Vargas hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a world full of noise, long-term thinking stands out. On the Capital Ideas podcast, Capital Group leaders explore the decisions that matter most in investing, leadership, and life. It's a rare look inside a firm that's been helping people pursue their financial goals for more than 90 years. Listen to the Capital Ideas podcast from Capital Group, published by Capital Client Group, Inc. President Trump weighs ending the Iran War without forcing a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. Plus, Washington State moves to tax millionaires as the blue state, red state, tax divide widens. While Washington, D.C. is taking us backwards.

The good news that's here in Washington State, we're moving forward, everybody. And new diet advice from the American Heart Association contradicts the government's recommendations on red meat and dairy. It's Tuesday, March 31st. I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal, and here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. U.S. gasoline prices have crossed the $4 a gallon mark, according to AAA, and are now up more than a dollar compared to a month ago. That's after a Kuwaiti oil tanker was struck by a drone near Dubai overnight, an attack that market analysts say highlights the growing threats to key shipping routes. It also comes as we report that President Trump has told AIDS that he's willing to end the war against Iran without reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a mission that he and his aides have assessed would push the conflict beyond his timeline of four to six weeks. Such an outcome could extend Tehran's grip on the waterway and leave the complex task of reopening it for a later date. Our Lindsay Ellis asked White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt how the strait fits into President Trump's plans.

I'm trying to square the four objectives laid out by the administration with the goal of reopening fully the Strait of Horn Rouge. Would President Trump declare victory and wind down military operations if the four objectives are met but still passage remains quite slow through the strait? Look, as I've said repeatedly and as the president has laid out, the objectives of Operation Epic Fury are as follows. destroying the Iranian Navy, destroying their ballistic missiles, dismantling their defense industrial infrastructure that produces those weapons that have long threatened the United States and our allies, and then, of course, preventing Iran from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon. The full reopening of the strait is something the administration is working towards,

but the core objectives of the operation have been clearly defined for the American people by the commander-in-chief. Defense Secretary Pete Hankseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dan Cain are set to brief reporters at 8 a.m. Eastern this morning, their first news conference on the war in almost two weeks. High earners in Washington State will face a new tax on income over $1 million starting in 2028. The 9.9% tax was signed into law yesterday and comes as a number of Democratic states debate similar measures, which proponents cite as necessary to combat inequality and to plug budget holes caused by President Trump's cuts to federal health and nutrition assistance programs.

Here was Washington's Democratic Governor Bob Ferguson, courtesy of Fox 13 Seattle. This is truly a historic step forward on rebalancing our tax code. It's the right thing to do for Washington's working families. It's the right time to do it. And it's the right policy. Republicans in Washington and beyond have warned that the tax could drive residents to move to lower tax states, of which there's an increasing number. Mississippi and Oklahoma are among those aiming to eliminate personal income taxes altogether,

while South Carolina is on course to lower its top income tax rate to under 2% this year. Whose diet advice to trust? Americans could be asking that question today after the American Heart Association recommended getting protein from plants instead of meat, choosing low-fat or fat-free dairy, and skipping butter and beef tallow in favor of olive, soybean, and canola oil. That stands in sharp contrast with elements of new guidelines introduced by the Trump administration this year, which endorsed full-fat dairy and specifically suggested that Americans eat red meat as a protein source.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been pushing those guidelines on social media, including in this remix he shared of a South Park episode about the Food Pyramid. What? Sir, the pyramid is upside down. Turn the pyramid upside down. It can't be serious. That would put butter and fat at the top of the damn food pyramid. AHA president and cardiologist Dr. Stacey Rosen said the government's encouragement to eat red meat and full-fat dairy products could hurt people's health and said that the HAA's new recommendations were based on decades of science.

And President Trump has unveiled the design of his future presidential library. It's a tower in downtown Miami set to feature golden escalators, a gold statue of the president, and what appears to be one of the planes used as Air Force One in the lobby. Construction of the complex will be partly funded by millions of dollars that Trump collected from lawsuits involving Disney's ABC News, meta-platforms, and Paramount, and he also directed his followers on truth social to a website soliciting donations. The new tower would be built on a parcel of land originally owned by Miami-Dade College, and sit next to the city's Freedom Tower, the site where thousands of Cuban refugees were processed in the 1960s.

A poll conducted in October found that about three quarters of Miami voters said they were opposed to the land, which is valued at around $67 million being used for the library. The project reveal comes as Florida Governor Ronda Santis yesterday, signed a bill allowing Palm Beach International Airport to be renamed after Trump, a move that will be finalized in July. Coming up, why bonds aren't proving to be the safe haven that many investors hope for, and Netflix looks to go big on its NFL coverage. Those stories and more after the break.

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listings every month based on average new for sale and rental listings, July 24 to June 2025. 2026 was shaping up to be a banner year for Wall Street. Just ahead of the new year, economic growth was accelerating. The Federal Reserve appeared set to make further interest rate cuts and markets had moved past fears of international trade disputes. And even when concerns set in that the AI boom could drag down software stocks and cracks started to show in the private credit market, stocks kept on moving higher. But so much for that. Investors are now just hoping to avoid a global recession triggered by a historic run-up in energy prices, with U.S. stocks on track to deliver their worst quarter in nearly four years. So where can investors find safety amid the war in Iran? As the journal's Sam

Holtfarb is here to discuss. The answer, lately at least, has been not very many places. Sam, your latest reporting revolves around bonds. Tell us what's going on in bond markets. So for about 20 minutes after the Iran war started, bonds were a place where you could seek safety. They rallied in a kind of traditional flight to safety move. But ever since then, they've been basically selling off. Yield on treasuries rise when bond prices fall, so this sell-off has pushed yields higher. The yield on the 10-year treasury note, which is the the most closely watched one has risen close to four and a half percent from being just a little bit under four percent right before the war started. It was kind of this milestone that that yield had fallen

below four percent. And then just like that, the war started and they started rising. And it's important because treasure yields kind of set a floor on interest rates across the economy. And the 10-year treasury yield is very important for setting mortgage rates. So as yields go up, mortgage rates go up. mortgage rates had also fallen to multi-year low right before the war. Now they're back up to around 6.3 percent on average. Yeah, yields very closely linked to interest rate expectations, as you mentioned. And another factor you write about is inflation fears. Those fears rising now because of energy prices in particular. And that's something that we know the Fed uses in its long-term rate outlook. So, yeah, I mean, people are basically worried that the Fed might not cut rates or even raise rates

because energy prices have gone up. And often the Fed will go-quote look through energy price swings when they're looking at inflation. But there's always concerns that energy prices are what people pay and that if they're rising fast, they could feed into consumer expectations for inflation. And if everybody, investors, businesses, consumers are feeling inflation, expecting it to be high in the future, that that actually can feed into actual inflation. And so that's the dynamic that the Fed is concerned about.

But you also have these other measures of interest rate expectations, basically like interest rate futures. And they also show that from before the war, people were expecting about two interest rate cuts this year. Now they basically think that the Fed is likely to not raise rates at all and even have been pricing as the high as 30 percent of a chance that the Fed would raise rates this year. And finally, Sam, as we've discussed, there's already been a lot of bond market movement in the first few weeks of the Iran war. What's going to determine the road ahead from here? So far, signs that the war will continue have led to higher yields, sort of hopes that it'll end. I've seen it called Hormu's hopes. When there's Hormuz hopes, bonds have rallied.

But investors keep on telling me the sort of psychology could change, the analysis could change. And even if the war continues, that people could start worrying more about its impact on economic growth, which actually could be good for bonds and cause them to rally. And there are a lot of investors who are quite bullish on bonds right now and kind of expect them to rally eventually. eventually whether the war goes on or not. That was General Markets reporter Sam Goldfarb in New York. Sam, thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. In other market news today, a key gauge of China's sprawling manufacturing sector

has returned to growth this month, fueled by a rebound in business activity following an extended Lunar New Year holiday, which landed in February this year. China's latest PMI data also showed a bounceback for both service and construction activity. While rising commodity prices and global freight costs because of the Iran war could risk a supply shock, economists suggest that should demand hold, China could once again expand its global market share, mirroring the manufacturing dominance that it saw in 2020. CVS is planning to open 60 new locations this year, including traditional storefronts, pharmacy-only sites, and outposts inside Target. The expansion follows years of downscings.

sizing with the closure of more than a thousand stores since the company announced plans to cut its retail footprint in 2021. The smaller pharmacy-only storefront is one way that CVS says it can address a rise in theft and competition from discount retailers that have heard national drugstore chains in recent years. And finally, Netflix already airs NFL games on Christmas. But we are exclusively reporting that the streamer is now eyeing a four-game NFL package including a Thanksgiving Eve and international game as it looks to attract subscribers and grow its advertising business. That comes as the League takes a flexible approach to selling the games

with Amazon, Google's YouTube, and other broadcast partners also expressing interest. Netflix is currently in the final year of a three-year Christmas Day game package where it paid roughly $75 million per game. And that's it for what's news for this Tuesday morning. Today's show was produced by Hattie Moyer, Our supervising producer was Daniel Bach, and I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a new show. And until then, thanks for listening.