April 28, 2026
Gas prices just hit a level we haven’t seen in four years.
I know there’s a lot going on, but the war with Iran is still a thing, and it doesn’t seem to be getting better or ending anytime soon. So the numbers I’m about to show you will likely keep going up and could soon start to increase inflation too. And in case there is a question here, these high gas prices are happening because of President Trump’s decision to strike Iran in late February.
Here’s the proof. This is the chart of U.S. gas prices over the last 18 months. See that spike? That’s February 28th, the day Donald Trump launched the first strikes in Iran. See the price—it just shoots straight up. Now, I know people are going to say it’s not as high as it was under President Biden. That’s true. Here’s the proof of that. This is the same chart of U.S. gas prices, but this one is zoomed out over the last 10 years. You can see right there—June of 2022—that’s when gas hit a national average of $5.01 for a gallon of regular.
Of course, President Biden did not choose to start the war between Russia and Ukraine—Russia made that choice. But if you’re the president, you’re going to get the blame, right? So if you choose to blame Biden for this, you have to also blame Trump for that. Fair is fair.
Something else you should brace yourself for—you know what else happened in June of 2022? Likely because of these high oil and gas prices and because of the supply chain disruptions caused by that war—which are all the same ingredients we’re working with now—in June of 2022, inflation hit 9.1 percent in this country. Do you remember that? High gas prices often drive up inflation rates too, so we need to keep an eye on that, and you should probably brace yourself for more inflation.
So let’s look at the actual gas prices. According to AAA, the national average for a gallon of regular gas in the United States today is $4.18. That’s seven cents more than yesterday, 16 cents more than last week, 20 cents more than last month, and $1.03 more than it was last year. Of course, the average varies state by state. The lowest average price for a gallon of regular is $3.57 in Oklahoma, and the highest is in California, where the average for a gallon of regular is almost six bucks.
Okay, so how do we stop the bleeding here? Well, oil prices are continuing to go up because the Strait of Hormuz continues to be closed and because of President Trump’s blockade of the strait. So both of those things need to be lifted to get us back to normal eventually. Just so you know, once this is all over, these prices are not going to snap back into place. It’s going to take time to unwind all this and get prices back down. But we don’t have to worry about that part yet because we’re nowhere near that point.
And that’s because Iran is flipping the script. They have now decided they want to separate the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz from the nuclear material negotiations. They now see it as two separate things, and they don’t want to even talk about the nuclear issue until they first sort out the strait—which, I will remind you, wasn’t even an issue until this war began. And here’s the kicker—Iran says they want to continue to have coordination authority over which ships use the strait and want to continue to charge tolls, which also was not a thing before this war started.
Of course, the U.S. says this proposal is a no-go. Trump’s entire purpose of striking Iran, he says, is to make sure Iran does not get a nuclear weapon. So it looks like, at least for right now, negotiations are stuck while oil prices keep going up by the second.
