President Donald Trump’s war with Iran has wiped away two of his top talking points of MAGA 2.0.
Fuel prices surged by an average of 12 cents per gallon on Monday, which Gas Buddy reports is the largest single-day increase in three years, while markets dipped dramatically.
The DOW crashed 1,100 points on Tuesday morning, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite plunged by 2.5 percent and 2.3 percent, respectively. The Wall Street Journal wrote of the crash, “The index is on track for its biggest one-day decline since April last year, when markets were convulsing after President Trump imposed broad tariffs on U.S. imports.”
Oil prices have also spiked and are already causing Americans pain at the pump.
The post-bombing spike means American gas prices, at an average of $3.11 a gallon, are now higher than they were a year ago. Tuesday also marked the first time since November that gas has averaged more than $3 a gallon.
Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at Gas Buddy, said he believes prices will continue to rise as conflict in the Middle East—which has left six American servicemembers dead—rages on.
He writes that the spike is directly tied to instability around the Strait of Hormuz, which is the only sea passage from the Persian Gulf to the open ocean. It is also what separates Iran from the United Arab Emirates and Oman.
“If tanker flows are materially disrupted, prices could rise further,” he wrote on Substack. “If maritime security stabilizes and flows normalize, some of this risk premium could unwind. For now, however, the pump reaction is not only underway—it’s accelerating.”
De Haan does not anticipate average prices exceeding $4 a gallon, but he said he could see them soon reach $3.35.
The areas that suffered the largest spike in gas prices over the last week are mostly in red states in the American heartland.
Gas Buddy reports that weekly prices rose the most in Wisconsin, spiking by an average of 33 cents per gallon, followed by Iowa, Nebraska, Georgia, Oklahoma, South Dakota, North Dakota, Missouri, Minnesota, and Arkansas. Aside from Minnesota, Trump carried each of those states in the 2024 general election.
The average gallon of gas cost $3.09 nationwide on March 3, 2025—a month-and-a-half into Trump’s second term. That is a far cry from the rare sub-$2-per-gallon gas Trump has touted this year, claiming his policies have driven costs down.
Trump, 79, even mentioned the sparse few gas stations that priced their gas so cheaply during his State of the Union address, despite those figures being far from reality for most Americans.
“Gasoline reached a peak of over $6 a gallon in some states under my predecessor—it was quite honestly a disaster,” Trump said in his big speech last month. “It’s now below $2.30 a gallon in most states, and in some places, one dollar and ninety-nine cents a gallon.”
Trump claimed that he saw gas for less than $2 a gallon during a January trip to Iowa, despite tracking firms saying at the time that fewer than 1 percent of stations offered that price. On that same trip, he was brutally fact-checked during an event by someone who yelled out that the actual gas prices in the state were 70 cents higher than what Trump was claiming.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the rising prices. However, Trump addressed the spiking costs in the Oval Office on Tuesday and claimed that the higher gas prices would be temporary.
“I’ll tell you what, I have never had more compliments on something I did,” Trump said of his Iran strikes. “People felt it’s something that had to be done. So if we have a little high oil prices for a little while—but as soon as this ends, those prices are going to drop, I believe, lower than even before.”
