(North Dakota Monitor) – North Dakota’s Republican and Democrat U.S. House candidates agree citizens are battling affordability concerns, but differ on ways to bring prices down.
Republican incumbent Rep. Julie Fedorchak partially blamed increasing diesel prices on President Joe Biden for preventing new fuel refineries from being built in the country while defending her votes to continue the Iran war. Democratic-NPL U.S. House candidate Trygve Hammer said Congress needs to assert its authority on the Iran war and tariffs to begin turning prices lower.
Fedorchak said some inflation is due to government spending, which she said Congress has taken “some pretty sizable steps” reducing government spending during her first term.
“Obviously, there’s more work to do,” Fedorchak said.
Iran war
Fedorchak said the war has an impact on energy costs, and those costs are baked into everything else in the economy. Congress reformed energy production in the country over the last 21 months, she said, especially oil and gas extraction and power generation.
“Those reforms were driving down the cost of energy substantially, but for the war in Iran, Americans would be enjoying the costs of substantially lower energy prices now,” she said.
On Friday, the average cost for a gallon of diesel in North Dakota was $6.22, according to AAA fuel prices. One year ago, diesel averaged $3.46 per gallon in North Dakota.
Fedorchak has voted against measures requiring congressional approval to continue the war in Iran six separate times, most recently in mid-September.
Economic sanctions and the U.S. embargo of the Strait of Hormuz are “paying off,” she said, and it would be a “big mistake” to withdraw from the region prematurely.
“I believe we’ll see that war end sooner rather than later,” Fedorchak said. She added Iran was a growing nuclear threat and would have created a problem for the whole world to contend with, which is why President Donald Trump decided to take action in February.
“As a result, I think we will have a much safer world because that threat is going to be neutralized when this is all said and done,” she said.
In April, Fedorchak said she believed the Iran war would “be done and completed successfully” within 90 days.
“I think that was the intelligence at the time, but it’s really impossible to predict out how these things unfold,” Fedorchak said last week.
Hammer said he would have voted in support of the Iran war powers resolutions that have come before the U.S. House. He added the war hasn’t made the country more secure “financially or physically.”
“Our delegation in the Senate and House are just allowing it to go, and because we aren’t having the proper oversight, we don’t really have a clear goal,” he said. “We need to find a way to end this conflict, to kind of end the infection, and bring down the inflation.”
Hammer said allowing the war to continue just because Americans have already suffered casualties and paid a financial cost is a false argument for continuing operations. Congress had the opportunity to make its concerns known earlier in the engagement and declined to exercise any authority, he said.
“It’s basically a tax at the gas pump and at the grocery store,” Hammer said. “These are self-inflicted wounds that we didn’t have to have, and if Congress had been exercising its authority, being the check and balance that they are supposed to be, then we might not have had those things.”
Tariffs and healthcare
Hammer said the affordability crisis is showing itself in a “K”-shaped economy, where affluent households are doing well while working class North Dakotans struggle to make ends meet with higher prices.
Besides the war in Iran, Hammer said the other major driver of higher costs are the Trump-imposed tariffs, especially with Canada.
He criticized the Trump administration’s adversarial relationship with Canada and worries that continued antagonism with North Dakota’s biggest trading partner will push them into more substantial agreements with other countries or the European Union.
Farmers, businesses and markets need certainty to operate, Hammer added, and not be destabilized by the federal government.
Fedorchak said tariffs have been a tool for the Trump administration to create a level playing field for trade, and Congress’ role is to evaluate the trade deals brought to the legislative branch. Since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled many of Trump’s tariffs as illegal, Fedorchak said the administration has been issuing its new tariffs in the proper way.
She said she recognizes Canada is the top trading partner with North Dakota and has communicated with Trump administration officials that trade decisions with the state’s northern neighbor must be resolved “sooner versus later.”
“We don’t want to lose money on both sides with the export and the import of goods from Canada,” Fedorchak said.
The next Congress plans to address increasing healthcare costs, Fedorchak said, which could take the form of expanded health savings accounts and providing federal healthcare insurance subsidies directly to Americans instead of insurance companies.
Hammer said Congress caused healthcare cost inflation for families by not extending the Affordable Care Act enhanced premium tax credits at the end of 2025, leading to more uninsured Americans.
About 3 million fewer Americans signed up for healthcare plans through the ACA Marketplace between 2025 to 2026, according to KFF.
“Things will get better. We’re going to get wages up and we will eventually get these gas prices down when we make better decisions,” Hammer said.
Independent candidates Helene Neville and Charles Tuttle are also running for U.S. House.
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