Trump Forecasts Significant Drop in Gas Prices Once Iran War Ends

President Donald Trump has forecasted that gasoline prices will drop “tremendously” when the war in Iran ends, coming two days after his energy secretary said that oil prices would continue to go up in the coming weeks.

Trump told Fox Business in an interview that aired on Wednesday that “gasoline is coming down very soon, and very big” while stipulating that it will occur before the 2026 midterm elections.

“I think they’ll be much lower. Before midterms? Much lower,” he said, adding that it’s on the “assumption that we stop a country that cannot have a nuclear weapon … if you give Iran a nuclear weapon, you wanna see bad stock markets? You won’t have a country.”

He then added, “So, on the assumption we have that settled, hopefully long before that … when that’s settled, gas prices are gonna go down tremendously.”

After the war was launched on Feb. 28, the price of a barrel of Brent crude oil has been hovering around $100. While the price has decreased on average over the past week, it rose slightly on Wednesday to around $95 per barrel, while West Texas Intermediate crude increased by more than 1 percent to $92 per barrel.

In the United States, gasoline prices have been elevated. Days before the start of the war, the price for a gallon of regular gas was $2.98, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA).

AAA estimated that a gallon of regular gas averages about $4.10 as of Wednesday, down from $4.17 a week prior. The price is also currently above $5 per gallon in California, Hawaii, and Washington state, according to AAA data.

Trump’s comment comes as Energy Secretary Chris Wright said at a forum on Monday that oil and gas prices are set to continue to increase and reach their peak price level in the coming weeks.

“We’re going to see energy prices high—and maybe even rising—until we get meaningful ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz,” he told an audience at the Semafor World Economy conference in Washington.

“That’ll probably hit the peak oil price at that time,” he added, which will be “probably sometime in the next few weeks.”

After the war ends, he added, “you’ll start to see downward pressure” but he stressed “it will take some time” after that.

Gas prices could become an issue for Republicans and the Trump administration ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, which could see the GOP lose control of both chambers of Congress. Some Democrats have already deployed a message around what they call an affordability crisis that has been worsened by the administration’s economic policies.

A news release issued by the Democratic Party said that gasoline prices are “more than $4 a gallon, inflation is soaring, and families are being pushed to the breaking point” in a bid to highlight Democratic lawmakers’ policy agenda.

“Democrats used this state work period as an opportunity to highlight their affordability agenda to lower costs on energy, housing, health care, and more,” it said, referring to town hall meetings held by several senators.

In the Fox Business interview that aired on Wednesday, Trump said the war in Iran was “very close to being over” but stressed that the U.S. military isn’t finished.

“If I pulled up stakes right now, it would take them 20 years to rebuild that country. And we’re not finished,” he said. “We’ll see what happens. I think they want to make a deal very badly.”

The prices have increased due to the Strait of Hormuz being effectively blocked during the conflict as Iran’s military launched attacks on civilian ships in the region. The U.S. military, starting on Monday, imposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports, prompting warnings from Tehran.