It seems like there's barely any place on earth that is escaping the ramifications of Trump's War of choice on Iran. The whole world is paying a price and the less affluent seem to be the most heavily burdened. As if their lives weren't difficult enough already. Do the billionaires like Trump care even one iota for the common man on any level? Was the economic well-being of the planet taken into account for even 5 minutes when they were planning this ridiculous and highly unpredictable war? Now it looks like we're going to have to contend with significant hikes in the price of gasoline, electricity, natural gas and perhaps even significant gas shortages. This no doubt will reverberate through countless industries, and effect billions of people. Don the Destroyer continues his rampage of worldwide sabotage. Like its neighbors, the shrimp boat “Lucky Blessings” has been docked all month at a pier in central Thailand. Wittaya Lekdee, the owner, cannot take it out to sea because he can no longer afford boat fuel, the price of which has spiked 75 percent. “It’s the worst that it has ever been,” he said of his plight. In the Philippines, 48-year-old Richard Arcana has fished his whole life. But now he is looking for another job. The oil shock from the war in Iran has rippled through much of Southeast Asia, upending lives, straining local economies and increasing public discontent. While many countries are contending with the fallout, experts say this region of more than 600 million has been one of the hardest hit. “It’s a crisis abroad,” said Suchart Kendang, the head of the a coastal fishermen group in Samut Sakhon Province in Thailand. “But we are the ones who get screwed.” In the Philippines, the government is handing out the equivalent of $84 each for tens of thousands of motorized tricycle and jeepney drivers around Manila. In landlocked Laos, which buys fuel from now oil-strapped Thailand, over 40 percent of the gas stations have been forced to close because they ran out fuel. Similarly, in Cambodia, which imports fuel from Thailand and Vietnam, nearly a third of the country’s gas stations have closed. Image Unlike the United States or Europe, Southeast Asia is heavily dependent on oil that sails through the Strait of Hormuz. Nearly 80 percent of the region’s crude oil imports come from the Persian Gulf, and about a fourth of its liquefied natural gas imports have to pass through the now-blocked strait, said Sam Reynolds, an analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. In Wawa, a fishing community south of Manila, Linita Buenaventura, 52, said her husband had to abandon the family’s boat to find a job in another town because of high gas prices. She temporarily lives with a friend because they can no longer afford to pay rent for their small hut. “We were proud fishermen who owned our own boats. Now we are reduced to begging for jobs,” she said. “It really is a hard life.” The real suffering is for people like us, the lower and middle class,” she said. Even in the wealthy city-state of Singapore, the government has warned of higher electricity prices. About 47 percent of its L.N.G. last year came from Qatar. On Wednesday, Singapore’s President Tharman Shanmugaratnam said Singaporeans must “brace ourselves for a long storm of global political instability.” If oil prices continue to rise, Mr. Suchart, the Thai fisherman, said he will have to stop fishing, a job that he’s been doing since he was 13 years old. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/20/world/asia/iran-war-oil-thailand-vietnam-philippines.html?smid=nytcore-android-share
