Here’s how much Trump’s Iran war has added to Americans’ fuel costs

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Donald Trump ran for his second term promising to ​“make America affordable again.” Two years later, the president’s war with Iran has his constituents paying through the nose for gasoline and diesel.

In fact, per-person fuel costs have risen more in the U.S. than in any other country since the start of the conflict, according to a new analysis from the Finland-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, or CREA. 

The group calculates that between March 1 — the day after the U.S. and Israel made their initial strikes on Iran — and Oct. 14, gasoline and diesel costs in the U.S. were $160 billion higher than they would have been otherwise. That comes out to an extra $471 per person. CREA used fuel prices from January and February as a baseline to calculate the increases. 

Why are Americans paying so much more? It’s not because fuel prices have jumped more here; our price increases are similar to those in other market economies, CREA says. It’s because we guzzle a huge amount of gas in our personal vehicles.

“U.S. consumers … use so much oil, leaving them exposed to price shocks they can’t control,” CREA co-founder Lauri Myllyvirta said in a press release. ​“The lesson is clear: The best protection against volatile oil prices isn’t pumping more oil, it’s needing less of it.” 

That’s where — you guessed it — electric vehicles come into play. Going electric allows drivers to avoid swinging prices at the pump by simply zooming past the gas station altogether. Although electricity bills are also on the rise in much of the U.S., power prices tend to be more stable than gasoline prices. Case in point: The cost of driving a typical gas car 100 miles in the U.S. jumped from $11.23 to $16.69 over the first five months of this year, while the cost of driving an EV the same distance remained around $5.80, according to The New York Times.

Unfortunately for aspiring EV owners, the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress have made it harder to afford the vehicles. Last year, they ripped away federal tax credits that cut the cost of an electric car by thousands of dollars. 

That move might not be weighing on the minds of voters as midterm elections loom. But sky-high gasoline prices certainly are — and that could help tip the scales in the direction of Democrats as they look to retake Congress.