Toward the end of February, the nation’s average gas price per gallon was lower than the comparable period in any of the past three years. In just a short time, it went crazy, and is now higher than the past three years and running close to a dollar more than last year.
In March, the benchmark on West Texas Intermediate went from $67.05 to $99.53, an increase of almost 50% in one month.
Gee, something must have happened. I wonder what.
Bill Maher had a good line line on this topic. He said, “Nobody can afford gas. Gas prices are so high that Tiger Woods had to crash his bicycle.”
This week someone from the White House insisted that gas prices were lower.
The question is “lower than what?”
It’s technically true, if you compare the right periods. The national average eased up about 6 cents week-to-week, but it is already back up to where it was (in fact, slightly higher at $4.10). It is expected to shoot up again, and some parts of the country never experienced the slight decline in the first place.
US national average retail gas price was $3.77 in March 2026. It was $4.32 in March 2022, reached a high of $5.03 in June 2022, and was over $4.08 from Mar – Aug 2022. So $4.03 (per your AAA article) is technically lower than similar period a few years ago.
The original article states: the price is higher than any comparable time in the previous three years. That is correct.
Yes, prices have been higher in the past. There were peaks in 1981, 2008 and 2022. In terms of real cost (equivalent in today’s dollars), the highest prices were in 2008.
Both 2008 (financial meltdown) and 2022 (Ukrainian invasion plus post-COVID demand surge) produced nominal prices higher than 2026. All three, including 1981 (American deregulation and Middle East war), produced prices higher than today in March, 2026 dollars. The average price of gas, in 2026 dollars, peaked at:
1981 $5.24 ($1.38 nominal)
2008 $6.43 ($4.11 nominal)
2022 $5.91 ($5.03 nominal)
2022 peaked because of circumstances beyond the control of the USA. The surge in demand post-COVID was coupled with the reduced supply caused by the Ukrainian invasion and a very slow OPEC decision to increase production.
2026 peaked because of direct actions taken BY the USA (Iran attacks).
2008 was a combination of the two, depending on how much you blame the USA for the global financial crisis. (Probably a lot)
1981 was a combination of the two: (1) beyond American control: the Iran-Iraq war disrupted supply; (2) caused by America: the overnight removal of price controls created some gouging by some (but not all) oil companies and dealers.
So, to put it in political terms:
Trump had 100% responsibility for the 2026 surge.
Bush, or more accurately the American government in general, bore some responsibility for the global financial crisis. Assigning a percentage depends on which political team you play for. Democrats would say 100%, and frankly, that’s probably not far off.
Reagan’s situation is complicated. You can argue that his action precipitated the 1981 surge, but it isn’t fair to call him responsible. He didn’t create the war in the Middle East, and he did only what needed to be done in terms of price controls. The real culprits were the oil companies and dealers who took advantage of public confusion post deregulation. I would argue that Reagan was close to 0% responsible. Reagan’s enemies would probably say 100%, since he started the snowball downhill.
Biden had almost no impact on the actual 2022 surge, since he didn’t invade Ukraine or cause COVID, but he does bear some responsibility for policies that might have mitigated high gas prices in general, at least in the long term. He cancelled the Keystone pipeline and halted oil leases on federal land. (I don’t necessarily disagree with those policies, but he did make a choice to favor the environment over increased energy independence. It was a Sophie’s Choice situation.) But to the original point, reversing those decisions would have had almost no impact on the 2022 surge, given COVID and Ukraine.
The other thing that was done, I believe under Trump but it could have been under Biden, was placing 100% tariffs on the high quality low cost Chinese EVs.
The United States will soon be all alone in not allowing these EVs in from China (Canada will soon have 49,000 Chinese EVs a year priced under $35,000 Canadian rising to 71,000). In the rest of the world these low cost Chinese E.Vs are fairly ubiquitous and have spiked growth in the related E.V infrastructure. Sometimes the energy to power the E.Vs still comes from oil, but that is actually still more efficient so better for the environment, but obviously renewable energies are growing at an increasing rate as well.
In the United States, not only is it not the easiest to buy or use an E.V, but it’s impossible to buy any economy automobile (which is one reason why the prices for used vehicles has also increased dramatically.) Around 2015, automobile analysts proudly noted that, adjusted for inflation, the cost of autos was lower than around 30 years prior. Starting around 2017, the U.S auto manufacturers and dealers lied that the American people weren’t interested in buying economy vehicles.(Then why have the prices of used autos gone up?)
In reality, manufacturers often prefer to make fewer lines of products, this is especially the case in the auto sector where the higher priced vehicles have much higher profit margins. The reasons for doing this, even though it means overall reduced sales, is because the auto manufacturers don’t like cannibalizing sales of more expesnive vehicles with economy vehicles and it’s simpler to manufacture fewer lines of products.
Here in Canada (Canada doesn’t have its own auto manufacturing sector, but we have a large number of parts manufacturers, both the Canadian representatives for the manufacturers and the auto workers unions are complaining about the low cost high quality Chinese E.Vs. They really have nobody to blame but themselves.
Of course, since getting reelected, Trump has also delayed or cancelled renewable energy projects and has withdrawn subsidies for renewable energy.
It’s hard to know if any of these projects would have been online by now, but certainly if oil prices remain high going forward for the long term, then Trump is making it more difficult for Americans to have alternatives to oil and, in the intermediate and long run he’s making the United States less competitive.
Nice post, Scoop. Good, balanced account of the history. Thanks.
Adam, I like your updates to the present-day context. That said, I’m squishy on parts because of the counterfactuals involved, ie, we still don’t know how lots of things will turn out.
Also, I’m leery of leaning too heavily on the virtue of Democrats. They have big problems shooting straight. That is, they’re wedded to a lot of bad ideas, and can’t seem to give them up. Like, degrowth (anti-energy use, period), NIMBY (ie, globally generous, locally I got mine, you can fuck off), anti-winning elections, pretending to want universal empowerment, but their opinion of low-information participants in democracy is as savages (can’t have it both ways), whom they want to convert into household pets. There’s a lot of blinkered thinking & too much compartmentalization on that side of the aisle. My gloss would be we can & should do a lot better than the Republicans (and by-and-large I include most independents as closet Republicans), but the Democrats (yes, I’m one) aren’t our saving grace either. So I’m squishy on that point, too.
The right-wing propaganda machine of FOX/AM Radio/”alt-reality news” channels/streaming grifters sure has made no effort to beat the drum of affordability of yet another Trump created disaster.
How many times from 2020-2024 did the GOP look affordability, national debt, and crime in a loop of disaster? Affordability had gotten worse, the debt has exploded, and crime is on the same moderate downward trend as it was post COVID. But hey, you know what’s up? The real free-loaders in all this disaster, those nine figure plus earners who continue to take from labor and consumers until society collapses – all thanks to the beloved ‘invisible hand’ of the free market – all well guided around the average Joe’s neck thanks to Republican policies.
Congrats on the disaster MAGA. Musk, Thiel, and crew appreciate the tax breaks and being the doormat of America. Don’t worry, those jobs and cost of living benefits will trickle down any minute now, just keep listening to the bleach blonde plastic figurehead brain rot on your platform of choice.
Let’s not forget the electorate that put Trump back in power.
Oh, no doubt they’re the #1 cause because they’re the ones who are programmed. Point being though, the usual channels of lies and propaganda they immerse themselves in try to downplay as best to their ability all the things that are suddenly a five alarm fire when a Democrat is in office.
Wait until 2029, they’ll have the usual hits blaring across FOX: find the most heinous crime to broadcast, find the most unusual anecdotal scenario of someone trans/Muslim/immigrant etc ‘gaming the system’, blare the megaphone about gas prices or egg prices, and talk about the national debt.
All in the meantime propagated by grifters making eight figures or more on manufactured outrage so they can give the billionaires more money. And the rural GOP voting base will bend over and take it like the dumbasses they are.
Hat tip to Figaro. Indy, I don’t agree with everything you believe, but much of it. I’d never forget that Democrats can’t get their ducks in a row. I do mean can’t. Once that’s said, I fully endorse the points you made in this subthread. No, I’m not optimistic about the next four years nor the next ten. I fear 2028, the irrational exuberance of Democrats if we “win” in any sense, & I fear the 2030 census. I don’t predict either recovery or collapse of our democracy in the foreseeable future. But clearly the writing is on the wall for the U.S. Our glory is mostly behind us.
Typical elite left media. Always using numbers.
And facts! And well-reasoned arguments! They know no shame.
Well-reasoned arguments, damned well-reasoned arguments, and numbers, and facts. The four sins.
This chart raises a much more interesting question for me:
Why is a gallon of gas $3.63 in Minnesota and $5.84 in California?
California is literally right next to Texas and the ocean. So it can’t be transport costs.
Is it magic gas? Does it make your car run better than the same gallon from Minnesota?
What am I missing here?
Supply and demand. And possibly collusion.
Taxation is also a factor.
California’s economy runs rather independent of the rest of the country.
The average household income is $100,000, and gas currently costs $5.83.
The average household income in Mississippi is $54,000, and gas currently costs $3.68.
So a gallon of gas is relatively cheaper for the average California family than the average family in Mississippi.
Of course that doesn’t explain why gas prices in California are so much higher than in Massachusetts, where the average household income is $108,000 and gas costs $3.95.
And it doesn’t explain why the cost of gas, relative to income, is so much higher in Mississippi than it is in Massachusetts. Viewed from that perspective, gas costs almost twice as much in Mississippi as in Massachusetts. (California is in between.)
Amazingly, gas in Honolulu has not broken $6 per gallon yet. At least as of 4/25.
It was at $4.39 per gallon before attack, and it did not rise for a week. It’s now around $5.59 in my area. But the local gas companies know that the locals are not afraid to catch the bus when the gas gets this ridiculous. And we have a lot of EV’s.
At least a portion of the discrepancy between CA and MA is that CA’s gas tax is almost $.71/gallon while MA is a relatively low .27.47 / gallon. CA also charges sales tax on gas sales.
That’s a pretty small part of the difference.
Rough ballpark of the extra cost in California vs Massachusetts:
Taxes: +44¢
Special fuel blend: +30–70¢
Environmental programs: +20–40¢
Supply/logistics constraints: +20–40¢
Total: from $1.14 to $1.94 higher, averaging $1.54.
That’s consistent with the present moment, where the difference is $1.81.
Scoop, I like the case you’ve made in this subthread. Yes, taxes, along with other extra costs. But it’s all supply-side. I won’t argue that the supply side isn’t fully explanatory.
I’m also not going to argue that the demand is stronger in California. The demand is inelastic throughout the U.S.
But I feel (just vibes) from my past experiences in MA & CA that Californians as a group are more pro-gas consumption. As a bigger, more populous state, that force is more driving, no pun intended. I don’t know if we actually consume more gas, but expensive gas-guzzlers are all around, & it keeps on getting worse. Partly as Adam says because of federal & private sector bad actors, but because Americans go along for the ride. Californians as a group don’t care enough, get what we deserve, & nothing that happens seems to make us more self-aware of the harm we’re doing. I mean, to one another. I’m not a big believer in karma, but sometimes the chickens do come home to roost.
Gas is $6.00/gallon in the Bay Area now…
Thanks trump!
And what’s diesel?
It’s sort of like gas only different.
A friend gave me a handful of stickers with trump pointing and captioned “I did that!”
The idea is to paste them onto gas pumps so he’s pointing at the price window to remind folks exactly who’s responsible for the high prices.
I tanked up this weekend and went to apply a sticker to the pump, but… Somebody’d beaten me to it! Guess they sold a lot of those stickers…
This is a clapback to the ones made when Biden was in office and the fallout from COVID and the Ukraine war. As Scoop mentioned, MAGA can’t attribute actual causation to gas prices, outside of if something bad happens its not Trump’s fault and if something good happens then Trump gets credit. That’s the entire programmed line of thinking.
Here’s one thing I kind of disagree with, Indy. Indeed, “programmed” is apt. The low information participant in democracy is being taken advantage of, primarily by the right, bc the moderate & left end of the political spectrum at least pay lip service to educating them (which doesn’t work, nothing does). Sure, the GOP is evil-doers. But the Dems are a virtue-signalling monster. I’m sure democracy of a better kind is out there somewhere. I just don’t see it coming here. I don’t think anyone will be able to recognize & seriously spread this better thing for something like decades to come. For now, Dems are no panacea.
The two party system and lack of ranked choice voting turns everything into ridiculous binary choices. It’s too bad this can’t be like judicial voting in many municipalities where there are no parties and individuals have to think about the individuals involved to make a choice. A Democrat is absolutely never going to win a Senate seat in a good third or so states in the US, ever. The same with Republicans, but any Republican that ever tried to run on a platform like Ike or Teddy Roosevelt nowadays would be called a socialist because of the brainwashing.
Only way out of this is to bust up the party system and create more choices. I don’t like Democrats messaging because many of them are on the corporate take as well and stomp out their own younger idealistic candidates that aren’t ‘limousine liberals.’ This tribalism probably will never end though.
My mind boggles at the stupidity of the messaging acting like its 5D chess to counteract some of the idiotic conservative policies. Bernie has been the closest to a modern attack dog on where the ideology should go, but is a curmudgeon trying to de-stigmatize the socialist label when he should be getting away from that, and really only needed to pivot some of his institutional state policies to include non-profits, public-trust, and other organizations rather that necessarily government-owned alone.
99% of the battle is the economy, and it should be an easy win if you look at income inequity charts over the past 100 plus years to see where all the gains are going. A very easy merit based argument can be made against very high net worth individuals rigging the system and not creating jobs, reducing prices, creating meaningful technological advances, or improving cost of living but using administrative corporate mechanisms for their own infinite enrichment. It’s not a hard case to make when the richest 5000 people in the world and their assets could just disappear tomorrow, and the world would actually instantly become a better place because the monetary gains of everyone else would increase, and anything they ran would continue to run because they didn’t do shit operationally anyway.
Ideologies are like science, and like Max Planck stated: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
Maybe in 500 years if humanity makes it that long, the norms of what we accept today will be looked as archaic as the medieval dark ages.
We’re trending towards a $4.50 average next week, at the cost tag of $25 billion to the taxpayer, not counting the damage to infrastructure.
Congrats MAGA, you literally voted to raise your cost of living significantly and balloon the national debt to enrich defense contractors and oil barons.
Well, to be fair, they voted AGAINST U.S. involvement in foreign wars, as Trump promised.
Basically, his voters are Flounder, and the President is Otter.
I want Trump to be Dean Wormer, so Flounder can throw up on him.
Yes, but they are FOR U.S. Involvement in foreign wars now that Trump has started one. I cannot think of a movie character who switches opinions instantly based on what his boss (or similar authority figure) thinks.
Not a movie, but always look to the Simpsons
Burns: …I see it all now. You’re just a bunch of yes-men. I was making the wrong moves, and you were too gutless to tell me! Isn’t that right?
Smithers: Dead on, sir!
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In How to Succeed in Business, there is the sniveling Bud Frump, nephew of the CEO, who sings
Whatever my uncle may think, I think so too
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And then, there was the king of the toadies, Ed McMahon
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But why look to the arts, when J,D. Vance exists in real life. Remember when he called Trump “America’s Hitler”?