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President Donald Trump demanded on Monday that gas stations in the United States reduce their prices "IMMEDIATELY," arguing that oil is currently at $68 per barrel and continues to fall, in a message posted on his social media platform Truth Social.
"Gasoline retailers must lower their prices, IMMEDIATELY! They are too high considering that oil is now at $68 a barrel and decreasing," wrote Trump, who set a target price of $2.50 per gallon and warned that "if retailers do not do this, big problems await them."
The president also directly pointed to California, a state where prices range between $5.20 and $5.49 per gallon, well above the national average of $3.86 per gallon recorded this Monday according to the American Automobile Association (AAA).
"California should stop charging such high taxes on its gasoline. Soon the tax will be higher than the product itself, and the United States will not tolerate it, nor will the people of California, who are being abused by these ridiculous taxes and by their own government," Trump stated.
The message arrives one day before California raises its state gas tax from 61.2 to 63.4 cents per gallon starting July 1, the highest in the country, in an automatic adjustment linked to the state inflation index established by law in 2017.
Trump's pressure on the sector is not new. On June 24, he had already ordered the Department of Justice to investigate the major oil companies for keeping high profit margins despite the drop in crude prices, a move that reflects his frustration with the slow response of gas station prices to the decline in oil.
The backdrop of this situation is the energy crisis triggered by the conflict with Iran, which pushed crude oil above $125 per barrel and drove gasoline to a high of $4.56 per gallon on May 21, 2026.
After the announcement of the "Islamabad Agreement" with Iran on June 15, Brent fell by 4.67% to $83.27 per barrel, and prices at gas stations began to decrease, albeit gradually.
Analysts point out that gasoline retailers historically pass on price increases more quickly than decreases, which explains the gap between the current crude price and what drivers pay at the pump.
The Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, projected that gasoline could drop to $3 per gallon between June and September 2026, while the analyst Patrick De Haan from GasBuddy estimated that a full recovery to prices prior to the conflict with Iran would not occur until early or mid-2027.
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