Trump isn’t happy that gas prices are falling more slowly than crude oil.
He’s not the first president to be frustrated
President Trump slammed oil companies in an early-morning social media post on Wednesday for prices at the pump that are not falling as quickly as crude oil prices since energy began flowing more freely through the Strait of Hormuz. “Customers are being ‘gouged,'” the president wrote on Truth Social just after midnight, adding that he had instructed his Department of Justice to investigate. “Gasoline prices better start going down a lot faster than what I’m seeing!” Trump’s frustration with the lag is a common one among presidents — it flummoxed President Biden just a few years ago — and is reflected in price fluctuations in recent weeks. Both crude oil and pump prices have been falling over the last week, but crude has moved down at a faster pace. International benchmark Brent Crude is down over 5% between June 18th and 24th, according to Yahoo Finance data.
When will gas prices go down? But the national average of gasoline in the US tracked by the American Automobile Association (AAA) shows a more modest 2.5% drop over the same period from about $4.02 to $3.92 per gallon. Over the last month, crude oil prices have been down over 27% while gas prices have been down 13%.