On May 23, AAA pegged the national average price of gasoline at $4.53 a gallon. By Tuesday, that number was $3.93. Sixty cents gone, just like that — no act of Congress, no green energy subsidy, no breathless press conference from a "climate czar."
The difference was a war that ended.
President Trump took a victory lap at a Mack Trucks plant in Macungie, Pennsylvania, crediting the resolution of the Iran conflict for the plunge. "The average price of gasoline nationwide is down 60 cents a gallon, just from a short while ago," Trump told the crowd. "We had to make this detour, we had to go to Iran."
The numbers back him up. Brent crude sat at $103.54 per barrel on May 22, the day before Operation Epic Fury's final phase wound down. By Tuesday evening it had collapsed to $77.16. Trump noted the trajectory is still heading south: "We actually hit, for a moment today, in fact, I think it's going to break it, $70 a barrel."
The Strait of Hormuz — the narrow chokepoint where approximately 19 million barrels of oil flowed on Monday alone, roughly one-fifth of the world's supply — had been the flashpoint. When Iran threatened to close it, oil markets panicked. When the conflict ended and shipping lanes stabilized, markets did what markets do with surplus supply. They dropped.
"You can't let them blow up the Middle East, and then us, if that's possible," Trump said, framing the military action as a necessary detour on the road to lower energy costs. He also pointed to the strategic prize beyond the barrel price: "And the big thing is Iran will not have a nuclear weapon."
Critics spent the spring warning that Operation Epic Fury would destabilize global energy markets permanently. Cable news panels speculated about $6 gas by summer. The Brent crude spike to $103.54 seemed to confirm the prediction — for about four weeks. Then the conflict resolved, the strait reopened, and crude started its slide back toward pre-conflict levels. The February 27 price had been $72.48. We're almost there again.
For context, the all-time national average high was $5.02 a gallon, set on June 14, 2022, under President Biden. No military operation caused that one — just policy. The current $3.93 isn't cheap by historical standards, but the direction matters. Prices are falling while the stock market climbs and a nuclear program gets dismantled. That's a combination most administrations would frame as a generational achievement. This one just pointed at the gas station sign.
Trump made the remarks at a Reading Regional Airport event before heading to the Mack Trucks facility — a manufacturing backdrop that let the pocketbook argument land in front of exactly the audience feeling it most.
Sixty cents doesn't sound like much in a headline. At 15 gallons a fill-up, it's $9. Do that weekly, it's $468 a year back in your pocket. Exposed pipeline of Iranian crude aside, that's the kind of math that fits on a bumper sticker — which is probably why it was delivered at a truck plant.