Standing in front of a gas station in Charlotte, North Carolina on Wednesday, Kamala Harris held up her phone to the camera and started doing what she does best: complaining about problems she created.
“Hey everyone. So I’m here in Charlotte,” she said. “Since the start of Trump’s war of choice, it’s 15 more dollars every time you fill up your tank of gas.”
She went on to warn about diesel prices rising 80 percent. She talked about working people. She criticized Trump for prioritizing his own political interest over American families.
On June 14, 2022, the national average for unleaded gasoline hit $5.016 per gallon. The highest ever recorded in American history. Diesel set its own record five days later, averaging $5.816 per gallon. Harris was vice president for all of it. She didn’t stand in front of a gas station then. She didn’t hold up her phone.
The Biden-Harris administration came into office and almost immediately began throttling domestic energy production. One of Biden’s first acts as president was canceling the Keystone XL pipeline, killing an estimated 11,000 jobs and signaling to the energy sector what the next four years would look like. They curtailed drilling permits on federal land, rejoined international climate agreements that constrained American output, and effectively told the oil and gas industry it wasn’t welcome in the new Washington.
By the spring of 2022, Americans were filling up at $5 a gallon. Grocery store shelves reflected it. Trucking costs reflected it. Everything that gets transported reflected it. Harris was at the White House the entire time, and the most notable thing she said about energy policy was to encourage people to buy electric vehicles.
Now, four years later, gas prices are averaging around $4.09 nationally as of Thursday, according to AAA. That’s up from $3.17 a year ago, driven in significant part by the current U.S. Military operation against Iran, which has tightened global oil markets. Trump has been direct about the tradeoff. When asked about the price hike at the end of March, he told reporters: “Four dollars, yeah, and we have a country that’s not going to be throwing a nuclear weapon at us in six months.” His argument is that the short-term cost of Operation Epic Fury is worth the long-term security gain of eliminating Iran’s nuclear threat.
