CNBC’s Jim Cramer criticized President Joe Biden on Wednesday after he sent a letter to oil companies blaming them for the price of gas.
Biden sent a letter Wednesday morning to the heads of seven major oil companies demanding answers as to the price of gas and threatening the companies. Biden first blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for the spike in price but then blamed the oil companies themselves for the alleged “unprecedented disconnect between the price of oil and the price of gas.”
Biden alleged the oil companies were making “well above normal” profit margins.
Cramer called the letter “worrisome.”
“What’s worrisome to me is the president, our president — our president’s reaction is to send a letter to the oil companies saying you’re making too much money. And that is, that harks back to an era of Jimmy Carter, and the Jimmy Carter, you know, windfall tax,” Cramer said. “I mean, it’s all the things that just say ‘don’t own stocks, just don’t own them.'”
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“The president uniquely rebuffed the oil companies who wanted to produce more and instead is going to Saudi Arabia, which he called a pariah and a murder state,” Cramer added. (RELATED: Biden Privately Admitted His Gambit To Lower Gas Prices Was Pointless: REPORT)
Former Democratic President Jimmy Carter implemented the windfall tax in 1980 that ultimately resulted in reduced domestic oil production and increased foreign oil imports. During the 1970s, things became so bad that gas was rationed and Americans waited in exceptionally long gas lines.
Host Carl Quintanilla then referenced a letter from the American Petroleum Institute to Biden that asked the president to loosen federal land restrictions, speed up permits and more, to which Cramer said Biden’s “base would just have a fit, his green base would have a fit if they did that.”
Cramer argued Biden has “made it harder” to get pipelines over the past few months.
The national average price of gas hit more than $5 per gallon June 9, according to Gas Buddy, a company that tracks real-time fuel prices.