Fact check: The average US gas price is higher today than during 91% of Biden’s presidency

By Daniel Dale, CNN

(CNN) — President Donald Trump made this claim Tuesday morning about gasoline prices: “If you notice, the price is not very high, relatively speaking. I mean, it’s lower than during the Biden administration.” Referring to the war with Iran, Trump also told reporters that the price of gas is “lower during a military conflict than it was during the Biden administration.”

It’s true that the AAA national average gas price on both Monday and Tuesday, $4.16 per gallon, is lower than the peak national average gas price during the Biden administration, $5.02 per gallon in June 2022 – which occurred during the international spike that followed Russia’s full-scale military invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

But the current $4.16 per gallon national average is significantly higher than the national average when Biden left office in January 2025, which was $3.12 per gallon. And it’s higher than the national average was on 1,334 of Biden’s 1,460 full days as president, figures provided by AAA show.

In other words, the national average gas price is higher now than it was during 91% of Biden’s term.

It’s also higher now than it was every single day of Biden’s last 29-and-a-half months in office. The last time under Biden that it was higher than it is today was August 3, 2022, according to AAA, when it was a smidgen higher if you go to multiple decimal places.

What constitutes “not very high” is subjective, though it’s a certainty that many Americans disagree with the president’s assessment. The current national average is much higher than the average a year ago today, when it was $3.12 per gallon, and the average when Trump launched the war with Iran in late February, $2.98 per gallon. However, it has come down from a month ago, when it was $4.53 per gallon, and from a week ago, when it was $4.29 per gallon.

Trump’s repeat story about gas prices in Iowa

Over and over during the Iran war, Trump has tried to deflect concerns about current gas prices by telling a story about the gas prices he claims he saw when he visited Iowa early this year. He told it again three times on Friday – at an event in Wisconsin, in an interview, and in comments to reporters.

“I was in Iowa, another place I like a lot, and it was just before we started the excursion to Iran. And we passed gas stations; it was $1.85 a gallon. And we’re going to get them down to those numbers again very quickly,” he said at the event.

“I was in Iowa, and for a gallon of gasoline, it was at $1.85. And that was three-and-a-half months ago,” he told reporters.

The Iowa trip Trump was talking about happened in late January, more than four months ago. More importantly, the Iowa average for regular gas that day was $2.57 per gallon, according to AAA – and the firm GasBuddy found just four stations in the state selling that day for under $2 per gallon ($1.97, to be specific, not $1.85) out of 2,036 stations the firm was tracking there. A CNN reporter noticed that the station right outside the venue where Trump spoke that day was at $2.69 per gallon.

It’s possible Trump was referring to the price of E85, an ethanol-gasoline blend that is sold in a minority of gas stations and can only be used in a small percentage of vehicles that are compatible with it; the blend was selling for around $1.85 per gallon in Iowa at the time of his visit. But as when he told the story about Iowa gas prices on previous occasions, he offered no indication in these comments that he was talking about a niche product.

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