Trump says US makes a fortune from high oil prices, boasts of hundreds of billions from Gulf conflict as pump prices run 40 percent above last year

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Donald Trump told a rally in Georgia on Saturday that the United States is making "a fortune" from high oil prices. "I don't give a damn, I'm gonna say it: We're making a frickin' fortune," he said, telling the crowd that buyers were turning to Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana as Gulf supply burns — seven tankers ablaze in the Strait of Hormuz, an airport reopened in Riyadh only under continued Houthi threat. His advisers, he said, had urged him not to bring up the topic because people are paying more at the pump. He brought it up anyway.

The numbers explain the politics. AAA put the national average for regular gasoline at about $4.29 a gallon on Oct. 25 — down from roughly $4.49 a month earlier but far above the $3.06 of a year ago, a rise of about 40 percent. A New York Times/Siena poll of 3,494 likely voters found 73 percent disapprove of Trump's handling of gas prices; no other issue scored worse for him. Even among his own 2024 voters, 43 percent disapprove. Gavin Newsom reposted the video with the caption: "Congratulations to Big Oil on their very successful, record-profits presidency."

The asymmetry is the structural fact beneath the rally rhetoric. The US is a net energy exporter: Gulf chaos transfers money from European and Asian consumers to American producers, the Treasury, and oil states that vote Republican. Europe pays a war premium on a conflict it has no vote in — and Iran's threats to extend attacks from tankers to AI infrastructure and undersea cables would push that premium from the fuel bill into the digital economy. Trump, for his part, predicted the press would say he was boasting about profits while people suffer at the pump, and then said it for them.