Economy 4 min read By Callum Montgomery
Trump touts US profits from Iran war as petrol and diesel prices soar
Donald Trump says the United States is making a fortune from the Iran war, even as petrol averages $4.29 a gallon and diesel tops $6.35, squeezing household budgets ahead of the midterm elections.
US President Donald Trump has claimed that the United States is «making a freaking fortune» from the war with Iran, even as American drivers face soaring fuel costs ahead of next week's midterm elections. Speaking to supporters at a campaign rally in Georgia at the weekend, Trump framed the energy squeeze caused by the conflict as a financial gain for the country.
The national average for a gallon of regular petrol stood at $4.29 on Monday, up from $2.98 before the war began. Diesel has risen even faster, reaching a record above $6 last month and now averaging $6.35 a gallon, compared with $3.76 in February. The price of crude oil, the main ingredient in both fuels, has swung sharply as markets react to uncertainty over how long the conflict will last.
The rising costs have become a serious political problem for Republicans, who had made low fuel prices a central pledge of Trump's second presidential campaign. Cost-of-living concerns are now among the foremost issues on many voters' minds as they head to the polls on 3 November, and the energy crisis has left the president searching for solutions while promising that conditions will improve.
Trump has repeatedly argued that more expensive fuel is a small price to pay for a war he describes as necessary to stop Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon. He has also continued to blame his predecessor, Joe Biden, for the country's economic difficulties, and has presented the global oil squeeze as good news for American producers, noting that the United States is the world's largest oil producer.
His public comments on energy costs have shifted considerably since the conflict began. In February, shortly before the attacks on Iran launched on 28 February, Trump boasted in his State of the Union address that petrol was below $2.30 a gallon in most states. In March, as oil prices spiked less than two weeks into the war, he wrote on his social media platform Truth Social that when oil prices rise the United States makes a lot of money. Brent crude, which cost around $70 a barrel in 2025, climbed above $100 at that point.
As oil prices cooled over the summer amid hopes for peace, Trump complained in June that petrol retailers were not cutting prices quickly enough and warned of «big problems» if they did not act. In July he predicted that pump prices would soon return to the record lows Americans had enjoyed before the Iran operation. In early September he said oil prices would fall «right after the election», but later acknowledged it would take longer than the midterms. By mid-September, with fighting escalating again and Brent spiking past $101, he described higher petrol prices as «a very inexpensive price to pay».
Earlier this month Trump said he had struck a deal to buy Russian diesel to ease a spike in fuel prices, a notable reversal of years of US pressure on Moscow over its war in Ukraine. He also maintained that the United States had «TOTAL CONTROL» of the Strait of Hormuz, although shipping traffic through the waterway remained well below pre-war levels amid threats of further attacks from Tehran. He has predicted that diesel prices would fall «in record numbers», a claim that has yet to be reflected at the pump, where diesel averaged $6.28 a gallon in early October, slightly below a high of nearly $6.53 in September.
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