Gas prices are on the rise throughout the country, and it’s only fitting that this is occurring during the last week of President Joe Biden‘s term. High gas prices started to plague the country less than six months after Biden was sworn in and were a staple of his presidency. Americans have been paying the price, literally and figuratively, since his first year. As such, when he leaves office on Jan. 20, Biden will have set multiple records regarding the cost of gas, none of them good.
First, Biden has the dubious distinction of being president when regular gas reached the highest national average price on record in June 2022, when it was $4.929 per gallon. Second, between January 2021 and December 2024, the average cost for a gallon of regular gas in the country was $3.45 (according to the U.S. Energy Information Association), the most expensive price during a presidential term in U.S. history.
Biden is leaving office synonymous with high gas prices. This is ironic because he regularly tried to escape blame for soaring gas costs during his presidency but also insisted that the policies in his Build Back Better agenda were helping to lower gas prices. The president routinely blamed anyone and anything for gas prices soaring, a long list that included the Trump administration, the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the Russia-Ukraine war, among others. Yet, while he always tried to shift blame, Biden just couldn’t escape reality in the end: He was the problem.
Currently, the average price for a gallon of regular gas is $3.103. Barring a drastic price change during his last few days in office, Biden will finish all four years with an average gas price of over $3 per gallon (despite gas costing only $2.334 per gallon his first month as president). This is higher than at any point during the term of his predecessor, President-elect Donald Trump, who was in office for his first term from January 2017 until December 2020, when the average cost for a gallon of regular gas was $2.48, according to the EIA. It is an important distinction for many reasons, the least of which is how often Biden insisted his energy and economic policies were superior to Trump’s.
His messaging didn’t work. When people refused to buy Biden’s propaganda, his supporters crafted the narrative that the sole reason gas was less expensive during Trump’s time in office was a decrease in demand because there were fewer drivers due to the pandemic. This lie was parroted on the campaign trail by former President Barack Obama just days before the 2024 presidential election. Yet, data show that gas prices were consistently lower under Trump than the years Biden was in office.
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Speaking of Obama, while Biden is the president with the highest average gas price during a presidential term, Obama owns the record for the second highest, accomplishing this feat during his first term, between January 2009 and December 2012 — incidentally, when Biden was vice president. The average cost then was $3.069 per gallon. Gas prices would drop during Obama’s second term, falling to an average of $2.856 per gallon between January 2013 and December 2016. However, this, too, was more expensive than when Trump was in office.
It remains to be seen what effect Trump’s second term will have on gas prices. However, given that the last two Democratic presidents own the record for the two most expensive gas prices during a presidential term in the country’s history, one could safely assume that people are about to get some much-needed relief at the pumps.