Trump pushes for pause on federal gas tax

Since the war began, Americans have faced skyrocketing gas prices because Iran has effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz, a critical shipping lane for a fifth of the world's oil. Today President Trump exclusively told CBS News's Nancy Cordes he wants to suspend the federal gas tax to try and give Americans some relief at the pump. All this comes ahead of Trump's high stakes trip to China. The president heads to Beijing tomorrow, where he'll meet with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping. CBS News Senior White House and political correspondent Ed O'Keefe joins us now. So, Ed, the president says the ceasefire is on life support. What is the White House's plan moving forward? Well, military options remain, Lindsey. The president and other top officials have alluded to that. And today the Pentagon made clear that a key submarine has surfaced and is, let's just say, available for usage and now in the Mediterranean Sea, a signal to Iran, that as a ballistic submarine surfaces, that the military options remain. They've also put in a few more sanctions on people selling Iranian oil and entities sending Iranian oil towards China. So the economic squeeze, if you will, continues as well. The president made very clear that essentially what Iran is offering in terms of allowing its uranium to be extracted, the enrichment to be taken out of the country, kind of reneged on that. And that is one of the reasons why he's unhappy with this.

What more do we know about this suspension of his gas tax? We know that there have been Democratic and Republican legislative proposals out there for quite some time. And so it's just a matter of scheduling a vote and seeing what the bipartisan support for it would look like. Democrats today signaled A, we were the first to suggest this, B, we're fine with pushing that forward. But an 0.18 holiday on already expensive gas isn't going to bring that much relief when we're up more than $1 since the war began in late February. The president, saying this to Nancy in their conversation this morning, opens the door for Republicans to support the move, which had been a Democratic proposal mostly. And almost immediately, you saw lawmakers, like Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, announce that they are introducing legislation to do just that. All right, so let's talk about the president's trip to China tomorrow. We've learned representatives from 17 major companies, including Tesla, Apple, Meta will join the US delegation, including some of their high-profile names, Elon Musk, the likes of those CEOs. Is this normal? Well, first off, we should point out that all those companies have been invited. Whether they all ultimately make the trip remains to be seen, and they will not be flying with the president on Air Force One. It is common for a world leader to travel with the executives of companies based in his or her country to another key trading partner. We've seen already in the last year the Germans, the Brits, the French do this when they visited China, now the United States doing it as well with the invited leadership of companies like Apple, Cargill, Goldman Sachs, MasterCard, Visa, Tesla. We'll see ultimately if all of those CEOs show up. But it's a big sign that that is a big part of this trip, the economic relationship between the two largest economies in the world. But expect a lot of conversation as well about the war with Iran. China is Iran's biggest oil customer. You'll see talk about manufacturing, AI, and of course, things like the future of Taiwan and the fate of Jimmy Lai, that businessman who's been imprisoned in China because he was a leader of the pro-democracy movement.

Ed O'Keefe, thanks for sticking around after The Takeout. Appreciate you.