Trump said gasoline was under $2 a gallon, sometimes $1.99
Trump repeatedly claimed US gas prices had fallen below $2 a gallon, sometimes citing $1.99. This is false. The national average was about $2.95, the lowest state average was around $2.37 in Oklahoma, and no station in the GasBuddy database was below $2.
What we know
Trump repeated in his February 2026 State of the Union address, and on earlier occasions, that gasoline prices had dropped below $2 a gallon, sometimes claiming figures as low as $1.99.
The data contradicted this. At the time, the national average price of regular gasoline was about $2.95 per gallon. The single cheapest state average was around $2.37 in Oklahoma. Fact-checkers who searched the GasBuddy price database found no individual station selling regular gasoline below $2 a gallon.
Gas prices are one of the most closely tracked economic figures in the United States, updated in near real time. This makes the sub-$2 claim easy to check and clearly incorrect for the period in question.
Gasoline pricing is unusually transparent compared with other economic indicators because thousands of individual station prices are updated in near real time by services like GasBuddy and AAA, and aggregated into state and national averages that update daily. This makes claims about gas prices some of the easiest economic statements to verify or disprove, since there is no need to wait for a monthly government report. When Forbes and other outlets checked pump prices at the time of the State of the Union address, they found the national average sitting closer to $3 per gallon, consistent with the roughly $2.95 figure cited by fact-checkers, and no state or region anywhere near the $1.99 figure mentioned in the speech.
The repetition of the sub-$2 claim across multiple public appearances, rather than a single slip during a live speech, is part of why fact-checkers treated it as a consistent misstatement rather than a one-time error. Politically, gas prices are a highly visible and emotionally resonant economic indicator for many voters, since drivers see the posted price every time they fill up, which may explain why a specific, memorable, and false number continued to be repeated even after it had been publicly corrected by fact-checking organizations on earlier occasions. The persistence of the sub-$2 figure across a State of the Union address and earlier public remarks, rather than a single misstatement, is part of the reason fact-checkers flagged it as a recurring talking point rather than an off-the-cuff error, especially given how easily verifiable pump prices are compared with other economic statistics that require waiting for a government report. AAA's daily fuel gauge report and the Energy Information Administration's weekly retail gasoline survey provide two independent government-adjacent and industry data sources that both confirmed prices well above the figure cited, giving fact-checkers multiple converging data points rather than relying on a single tracker. Local variation in gas taxes and refining costs can push individual station prices somewhat above or below the national average, but even the lowest state averages recorded at the time remained well above the figure cited, leaving no plausible reading of the data that would support the claim anywhere in the country.
Common claims
- Gas is under $2 a gallon.Not supported
- In some places gas is $1.99.Not supported