Earlier quoted context omitted.
Price controls on utilities in the US are extremely common and successful. There are good ways to implement price controls and there are bad ways. Also, there are just as many examples of bad outcomes when you treat markets which are inherently unfree (i.e utilites, where infrastructure is typically monopolized) as free markets.
Price controls are successful until they aren't. The US can subsidise an egregious amount of bad policies for a very long time I suspect, from agriculture to health, it's not really going to hurt as there are other parts of the diverse economy that can pay. An better example would be Venezuela, with the largest oil reserves on Earth, they subsidised energy costs to an extreme extent and it was one of the things that…
For example, many EU countries have decided to enact policies that knowingly lead to high prices for motor vehicle petroleum, but this was decided to be acceptable because alternatives like public transportation exist, and are in many cases, preferable. Energy used to heat someone’s home is different in impact.
Venezuela’s economic issues are not a result of subsidies of petroleum for domestic use.
> Why not subsidise fuel if doing such things has such a successful history in the United States?
We do.