NEW YORK: The average price Americans are paying for petrol under President Donald Trump has overtaken the average during the Biden administration, underscoring the political pressure on Republicans ahead of the midterm elections.
Trump had pledged to lower petrol prices to below US$2 a gallon, but almost two years into his presidency the fuel’s retail cost has averaged US$3.472 a gallon, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA).
That surpassed the average under former President Joe Biden of US$3.471 a gallon by less than a cent, according to daily AAA data released on Monday.
Petrol prices surged this year after the start of the United States and Israel’s war in Iran, crippling oil flows and further squeezing global refining capacity.
Over the past eight months, US average pump prices have risen 43% while diesel prices have surged almost 70% and topped the highest level on record.
The issue has become a flashpoint for Trump’s Republican party in mid-term elections, as inflation-weary voters are further strapped by elevated energy prices.
Americans have never paid this much for fuel this late in the year, with a national average price of US$4.286 a gallon as of Sunday, according to the AAA.
Biden still holds the record for the single-highest nationwide petrol price of US$5.02 a gallon in June 2022, in the months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The global market is missing around 400,000 barrels a day of petrol that would normally be exported from the Middle East, said Susan Bell, senior vice-president, downstream at Rystad Energy.
The cost of diesel has been the main focus for the Trump administration in the weeks leading up to the mid-term elections with prices reaching a record high of US$6.53 a gallon last month.
Average prices of diesel under Trump have already exceeded the same figure under Biden by about 6%.
Fuel prices have become a lightning rod for critics of the Trump administration because their rapid increase this year has exacerbated a cost of living crisis that voters point to as their top concern.
They also represent a broken promise from Trump, who pilloried Biden constantly for high pump prices during the 2024 presidential election.
Trump has repeatedly said that petrol and diesel prices will come down once the war with Iran is over, but the conflict is showing no signs of abating.
At a rally last weekend, Trump celebrated how US oil companies have added “hundreds of billions of dollars” for the country.
“‘President Trump is talking about all the money they’re making while people are suffering at the pump’, that’ll be the headline,” he said.
“I don’t give a damn. I’m going to say it, we’re making a freaking fortune.”
High energy costs are threatening to turn solidly red areas of the United States into swing states.
Kansas, Iowa, Ohio, Texas and Alaska, which Trump won by double-digit margins in 2024, are now considered toss-ups for Senate races by the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election forecaster.
Households in each of these states, with the exception of Texas, spend more of their income on energy than the US average, according to James West, a managing director at Melius Research LLC.
Voters will likely weigh current gas prices against where Trump promised they would land, pre-pandemic prices that consistently averaged under US$3 a gallon, said Ryan Cummings, chief of staff at Stanford University’s Institute for Economic Policy Research and a former staff economist on the Biden Administration’s Council of Economic Advisers who worked on petrol policy.
“Really, what they’re comparing against is a US$1.50 difference,” Cummings said.
The Trump administration has taken steps to reduce the impact of fuel supply disruptions from the Iran war, including controversial measures such as a diesel deal with Russia.
But experts said the deal is too limited to meaningfully move prices at the pumps ahead of November’s midterm elections.
The administration also invoked war-time powers last Thursday to boost fuel production in the United States, with the Department of Energy announcing last Friday that it has US$150mil earmarked for investments in refineries.
One of the largest US refiners, Valero Energy Corp, last week said Trump’s latest efforts to tamp down pump prices would have little impact.
The Russian diesel shipments aren’t a “significant volume”, chief operating officer Gary Simmons said.
Valero’s chief executive officer Lane Riggs noted that Trump’s plans to boost production domestically would not pay off quickly.
“Almost any refinery that’s been shut down will take a while to start up, so it would be very difficult for them to help the prompt situation,” Riggs said.
“The idea that there’s these refineries that you can sort of walk in and flip the lights and they’re going to start running is not exactly the case.” — Bloomberg
