The Trump Gas Tax: Three Spikes, Same Author — and the Receipts to Prove It

Pull the work orders on 2018, 2022, and the spike Americans are paying for right now. The same name shows up on every one.

Every time gas prices spike in America, you are told it is somebody else’s fault. Obama. Biden. Putin. The Saudis. The deep-state climate cabal. Anyone. Everyone. There is a problem with that story. Pull the receipts on the last three major price spikes — 2018, 2022, and the one Americans are paying for right now in 2026 — and the same name shows up on the work order every single time.

Donald Trump.

Not as a victim of forces beyond his control. As the dealmaker. The signatory. The guy who broke the agreements, brokered the cuts, and ordered the blockade.

Here is the receipt book.

Spike One: 2018 — Trump Tears Up the Iran Deal

On May 8, 2018, Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and reimposed economic sanctions on Iran. Six days later, AAA reported the national gas price average had jumped six cents in a single week, with 36 states seeing prices a nickel or more above the prior Monday.

AAA did not blame Mercury retrograde. AAA blamed Trump, by name. From the May 14, 2018 AAA bulletin: “Oil prices climbed to new highs for 2018 last week, following President Trump’s decision to re-impose economic sanctions on Iran and withdraw the U.S. from the Iran Nuclear Deal.”

The mechanism was not subtle. Iranian crude exports — running near two million barrels per day at the time — were forced off the global market by sanctions Trump chose to reimpose. Less supply, the same demand, higher prices. Economics 101. AAA’s forecast that May was that the national average would push past $3.00 by summer. It did.

Americans were not paying a “Biden gas tax” in 2018. Joe Biden was a retired senator giving paid speeches. They were paying a Trump gas tax.

Receipt number one.

Spike Two: 2022 — Trump’s OPEC+ Deal Finally Comes Due

This is the spike the Trump movement screams loudest about. It is also the one with the most Trump fingerprints on the murder weapon.

In April 2020, with COVID demand collapsing and U.S. shale producers facing extinction, Donald Trump personally brokered the largest production cut in oil market history. Not a small deal. Not an incremental adjustment. Nine-point-seven million barrels per day — roughly ten percent of global supply — removed from circulation by signature. Trump’s own Energy Secretary, Dan Brouillette, confirmed on a Sunday evening conference call that Trump was “personally involved throughout the process” and “showed his skill at dealmaking.” Energy historian Daniel Yergin called it the “biggest and most complex deal” Trump ever made.

Read the structure of the cut, because the design choices matter:

• 9.7 million bpd cut for May and June 2020
• 8 million bpd cut for July through December 2020
• 6 million bpd cut from January 2021 through April 2022

April 2022. That is the production discipline Trump locked in. The OPEC+ deal did not expire when Trump left office. It expired four months after Russia invaded Ukraine. Global supply was already deliberately constricted — by Trump’s signature deal — when Vladimir Putin pulled the trigger on Ukraine and pulled Russian crude off the market on top of it.

Trump tweeted about the deal in real time the day it closed: “The big Oil Deal with OPEC Plus is done.” He was correct. It was done — done to American drivers two years later, when post-COVID demand snapped back and the supply Trump had taken out of the global system was not there to meet it. The national average hit $5.02 per gallon in June 2022, the highest price ever recorded in U.S. history at that time.

• 12.9 million bpd average in 2023 — breaking the previous global record of 12.3M bpd set in 2019.
• 13.3 million bpd monthly peak in December 2023.
• 13.249 million bpd average through most of 2024.
• 13.6 million bpd monthly record in July 2025.

The “Biden strangled American oil production” narrative is a fabrication. The actual record is on file at the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and it is the opposite of what the Trump movement claims. American production hit historic, planet-leading highs under Biden — while the global supply cap Trump signed in 2020 was still in effect through April 2022.

Receipt number two: the supply shortage that turned a Russian war into a $5 gas pump was authored, signed, and tweeted by Donald Trump.

Spike Three: 2026 — Trump’s Iran War, Now With Naval Blockade

This one is not subtle. It is happening right now, while you read this.

On February 27, 2026, the war with Iran began. AAA’s national average that day was $2.98 per gallon. On April 12, 2026, Donald Trump ordered a U.S. Navy blockade of the Strait of Hormuz — the chokepoint through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil supply flows.

By early May, the national average hit $4.39 (Washington Post, May 2), then $4.55 (TIME / AAA, May 20). Six states crossed $5 per gallon. California crossed $6.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics confirms that the gas price index posted the largest monthly increase since the agency began tracking it. The agency started tracking the gas price index in 1967. Fifty-nine years.

Trump’s own Energy Information Administration administrator admitted on April 7 that fuel prices would continue rising unless the Strait reopened. On April 12 — the same day Trump ordered the Navy blockade — he told the public gas prices “could be the same or maybe a little bit higher” by November.

His own words tell the rest of the story.

When oil prices go up, we make a lot of money.

— Donald Trump, Truth Social, March 12, 2026

I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.

— Donald Trump, to reporters, May 2026

That is not paraphrase. That is the sitting President of the United States, on the record, while American families pay roughly fifty percent more at the pump than they did ninety days ago.

GasBuddy’s Patrick De Haan now warns prices could hit $5 nationally in June if the Strait stays closed. Industry analysts told CNBC that prices will not normalize until well into 2027 even if the war ends tomorrow.

Receipt number three: every cent above $2.98 paid at the pump today is a line item on a war Donald Trump started and a blockade Donald Trump ordered.

The Pattern

Strip the partisan jersey off. Look at the structure.

2018: Trump unilaterally pulls Iranian supply off the global market. Prices rise.

2022: Trump’s April 2020 OPEC+ deal keeps six million barrels per day off the market through April 2022, exactly when post-COVID demand surges and Russia invades Ukraine. Prices spike to record highs.

2026: Trump starts a war with Iran and blockades the Strait of Hormuz. Prices post the largest monthly jump in the 59-year history of the BLS gas price index.

Under Joe Biden, the United States produced more oil than any nation in any year of human history. Under Trump’s first term, he negotiated the production cut that hamstrung the global recovery. Under Trump’s second term, he has personally engineered the largest oil supply disruption since the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

Don’t take it from Granite State Report. Take it from AAA. From the EIA. From the Washington Post. From Patrick De Haan. From Donald Trump’s own Truth Social feed.

The receipts are public. The math is not complicated.

AAA Gas Prices bulletins, May 10 and May 14, 2018 — Iran sanctions impact.

CNN Business, April 13, 2020 — OPEC+ 9.7M bpd cut announcement and structure.

Fox Business, April 13, 2020 — Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette on Trump’s personal involvement.

CNBC, April 13, 2020 — Daniel Yergin on scope of the deal.

U.S. Energy Information Administration, “United States produces more crude oil than any country, ever” (2024).

EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook, multiple 2024–2025 updates.

Washington Post, May 2 and May 20, 2026 — current war pricing and economic fallout.

TIME, May 20, 2026 — $4.55 national average; Trump quote on “Americans’ financial situation.”

NPR, May 3, 2026 — Hormuz closure analysis.

CNBC, May 22, 2026 — GasBuddy forecast (Patrick De Haan).

Office of the Governor of California, April 30, 2026 — Hormuz blockade order and state-by-state data.

Donald Trump Truth Social posts, March 12 and April 12, 2026.