President Donald Trump on Wednesday renewed his pledge that gasoline prices will fall below $2 a gallon once the war with Iran ends, but for the first time explicitly acknowledged that relief at the pump will not arrive before Americans vote in the November midterms.
Pressed by a reporter about why oil has climbed back above $100 a barrel despite weeks of promises that prices were headed down, Trump defended his position by tying the cost of gasoline directly to the war’s objective. “I think it’s very easy to explain to America,” he said. “All you have to do is say, will you let Iran have a nuclear weapon? And the answer is no.”
Trump went on to describe Iran’s economic condition in stark terms. “They’re doing very poorly. Their country is in shambles right now. They are, as you probably have seen the numbers, 300% inflation. Their money is valueless. They’re not paying their soldiers. We control the strait and lots of other things,” he said.
He then addressed the timeline directly, conceding a delay beyond the election. “So for a little while, I would say this shortly, but right after the election because they’d like to have it that way, but right after the election, oil prices are going to be tumbling downward. They’re going to be tumbling down and we’ll get them down, I think, for gasoline. We’ll get them below $2 a gallon, but not until after the midterm. I think it’s going to take a little bit longer than the midterm.”
The remarks build on a promise Trump made just days earlier in a Truth Social post. “Oil prices will drop precipitously, like everything else is dropping (but more!), when we WIN the war with Iran,” Trump wrote, predicting gas would first fall to $3 a gallon before eventually dropping “below Two Dollars a gallon.” He added that the drop would “all happen quickly,” and reiterated that “Iran will never have a Nuclear Weapon.”
The $2 pledge is not new. Trump made the same promise on the 2024 campaign trail, and pointed to falling prices throughout the first year of his second term as evidence he had delivered on it. In a State of the Union address on Feb. 24, 2026 — just days before the Iran war began — Trump told Congress that “gasoline, which reached a peak of over $6 a gallon in some states under my predecessor and was, quite honestly, a disaster, is now below $2.30 a gallon in most states, and in some places $1.99 a gallon.”
Those gains reversed quickly once the war started. By late March, the national average had climbed past $4 a gallon for the first time in four years, according to AAA data, an increase from just $2.98 a month earlier. On the West Coast, prices climbed even higher, with California averaging $5.89 a gallon and Washington state $5.35.
By early September, gas had climbed further still. Americans were paying roughly $4.15 a gallon on average as Brent crude approached $100 a barrel amid renewed fighting in the Gulf. An analysis published this week noted that Trump’s forecast offers no timetable, no definition of what “winning” the war would mean, and no explanation of which supply, refining or tax conditions would actually produce a sub-$2 national average.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright has offered a more modest version of the administration’s forecast. “We want it back below $3 a gallon. And it will be again before too long,” Wright told CNN, when asked how much longer elevated prices would last. Pressed on a specific timeframe, he said, “You never know exactly the time frame of this, but, in the worst case, this is a weeks, this is not a months thing.”
The rising cost of fuel has become one of Trump’s most significant political liabilities heading into the midterms. A poll released by NBC News found Trump received his lowest ratings on his handling of inflation and cost of living, with just 36% of registered voters approving and 62% disapproving, while 54% disapproved of his handling of the Iran conflict overall.
Trump has repeatedly framed the elevated prices as an acceptable cost of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. In a social media post over the weekend, he described the spike as “a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace,” a characterization echoed by White House officials, who have said prices will “drop rapidly again” once Iran’s government is “neutralized.”
As of Wednesday, oil markets showed no clear sign of the reversal Trump has promised, with Brent crude still trading near $100 a barrel amid continued fighting around the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s petroleum passes.