{"id":879456,"date":"2026-10-12T08:06:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T08:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/879456\/"},"modified":"2026-10-12T08:06:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T08:06:11","slug":"trumps-quest-to-lower-gas-prices-ahead-of-midterms-is-not-going-great","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/879456\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump’s Quest to Lower Gas Prices Ahead of Midterms Is Not Going Great"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump<\/a> is running into the limits of his influence as he seeks to bring down sky-high gas prices ahead of the midterm elections.<\/p>\n

In social media posts and stump speeches across the country, Trump has sought to assure voters that gas prices \u2014 a major sticking point for Americans grappling with an affordability crisis<\/a> \u2014 will soon go down.<\/p>\n

At the White House on Friday, for instance, Trump recalled seeing gas prices below $2 a gallon in Iowa before the US and Israel launched surprise strikes on Iran in February.<\/p>\n

“We’ll be down to those levels soon,” he said.<\/p>\n

The numbers and the trajectory of conflicts<\/a> around the world, however, portend a different story.<\/p>\n

As of Sunday, AAA reported that the average price of regular gas in the US was $4.36 per gallon. At this time last year, that number was $3.09. Diesel prices have also skyrocketed, reaching $6.28 per gallon earlier this month.<\/p>\n

Early Monday, Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, was trading about 2% lower at around $103 a barrel.<\/p>\n

That’s more than 40% above its level at the start of the Iran war, but about 2% below where it stood a month ago, after prices surged past $100 a barrel in early September.<\/p>\n

The bigger concern,<\/a> however, is diesel, where prices have remained elevated despite crude’s recent pullback.<\/p>\n

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Refinery bottlenecks and attacks on energy infrastructure in the Middle East and Russia have squeezed supplies of the fuel, which powers trucks, trains, ships, and farm equipment. That raises transportation costs across the economy and can keep inflation under pressure even if crude prices stabilize.<\/p>\n

Persistently high diesel prices also pose a political challenge ahead of the midterms, as rising transportation costs threaten to add to the inflation pressures already weighing on American households.<\/p>\n

Trump suspended fuel export sanctions on Russia this week to bring more diesel to the market and lower prices, prompting allies and enemies alike to wrinkle an eyebrow. Hours later, Ukraine struck a Russian oil depot.<\/p>\n

On Sunday morning, Trump tried again to calm oil markets, announcing an “ENERGY CEASEFIRE” between Russia and Ukraine<\/a> on Truth Social.<\/p>\n

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on X, however, that while he supports such a ceasefire, the deal was news to him. He added that a Russian drone struck a power plant in Kyiv on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, on Saturday in the Strait of Hormuz, through which oil shipments have slowed to a trickle as Iran flexes its control of the key waterway \u2014 a big reason the price of oil has increased and gas prices have spiked \u2014 an oil tanker struck a mine and caught on fire.<\/p>\n

The US-Israeli war on Iran is only expanding as Iranian allies target Saudi Arabia, a US ally, and its oil infrastructure. Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have expanded their control of the coast bordering the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a key shipping lane for Saudi oil exports. And last month, the group orchestrated an attack from southeastern Iraq on a major Saudi oil pipeline, forcing Saudi Arabia to temporarily shut it down.<\/p>\n

An attack on King Khalid International Airport by Houthi fighters on Saturday killed 12 people and injured over 300. One American was killed, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, and officials were forced to briefly close the airport.<\/p>\n

At this rate, it’s hard to imagine oil prices softening enough to relieve Americans of high gas prices by the time they head to the polls in November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Donald Trump is running into the limits of his influence as he seeks to bring down sky-high…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":879457,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[108728,8212,176838,28,10107,240426,219063,2402,801,145299,8208,1206,8915,3479,1208,25],"class_list":["post-879456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-ally","tag-attack","tag-average-price","tag-business","tag-control","tag-gallon","tag-gas-price","tag-inflation","tag-iran","tag-midterm","tag-month","tag-russia","tag-sunday","tag-trump","tag-ukraine","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=879456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/879457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}