Gas prices under Trump 2.0 are now higher on average than during Biden's 4 years in office

New data from the Energy Information Administration showed that gas prices since Jan. 20, 2025 have averaged $3.458 per gallon — the first time in President Trump's second term that overall average gas prices have surpassed the average seen during President Biden's four years in office.

The weekly government data, released Tuesday, shows a reading of $4.269 per gallon for Oct. 26, which nudged up the average price under Trump — from Jan. 27, 2025 to this week. It has now surpassed the $3.455-per-gallon average seen from Jan. 25, 2021, to Jan. 20, 2025.

Trump's gas price record is narrowly favorable to Biden's when comparing the first 91 weekly readings of both men's presidencies. "US Regular Gasoline Prices" from Jan. 25, 2021 to Oct. 24, 2022 averaged $3.517 per gallon.

Biden oversaw a spike in prices — including the highest gas prices on record of $5.006 per gallon the week of June 13, 2022 — as the US confronted oil shocks that followed Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The new numbers come exactly one week before the midterm elections and underline a clear political challenge for Trump and his party as polling shows that voters blame the president for gas price increases , which spiked immediately following the invasion of Iran earlier this year.

The gas price data also cuts against the president's message, which has been a consistent promise since the 2024 campaign to lower energy prices through new drilling.

Just this past weekend at a rally in Georgia , Trump offered his oft-repeated message that high gas prices are worth it, describing them as "temporarily high."

"You're still paying lower than Biden or Obama," he said.

Yet gas prices in Trump's second term are now essentially equal to Biden's and are significantly higher than the $2.476 per gallon average seen during Trump's first term as well as the $2.969 per gallon average during President Obama's eight years in office, according to a Yahoo Finance analysis of the EIA data.

At the Georgia rally, Trump celebrated another effect of high gas prices: bigger oil company profits.

"Our country is making hundreds of billions of dollars because of what's happened in the Middle East," the president said, citing increased exports of US oil at higher prices.

He added that his advisers urged him not to make that point and acknowledged that bad headlines could follow, "but I said, 'I don't give a damn, I'm going to say it: We are making a freaking fortune.'"

Ben Werschkul is a Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.