While cutting $0.18 off the price of a gallon of gas wouldn’t bring the cost back below $3.00, it would still add up over time. As Trump told reporters in the White House on Monday, “It’s a small percentage, but it’s, you know, it’s still money.” That’s right 10,000 Tariff Grandpa, it is still money. So should Trump find a way to do it anyway? Since it’s Trump, answers could easily be biased, but conveniently, Biden also suggested suspending the federal gas tax back in 2022, and we can still see what the experts said when Trump wasn’t president.
Back when Biden was the one desperate to lower gas prices, the Washington Post certainly wasn’t sold on the idea:
But the idea was met with skepticism from lawmakers in both parties. Economists are also lukewarm on the idea. Many are unconvinced that putting the federal gas tax on hold would bring prices down. They worry it would be a costly giveaway to the oil industry that ultimately aggravates the energy shortage.
Part of the reason economists cautioned against suspending the federal gas tax in 2022 had to do with our old friend supply and demand. Suspending the federal gas tax would have made gas cheaper, but it wouldn’t have increased the supply of gasoline, and according to the graph in this Intro to Economics textbook, when demand goes up and supply stays constant, bad things happen to gas prices. So the oil companies would get richer, but regular Americans probably wouldn’t see prices drop for long.
The other issue is that the federal gas tax goes directly into what’s known as the Highway Trust Fund, and suspending it would take billions of dollars away from important infrastructure projects. Or, as the Washington Post put it at the time, “That is money badly needed to invest in roads, bridges and other public works at a time America’s infrastructure is suffering neglect.” In fact, it was considered such a bad idea that Nancy Pelosi and Senator Marsha Blackburn somehow ended up on the same side of the issue.
Aside from the part where Marsha blamed Biden for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, all the old arguments from 2022 still make plenty of sense in 2026, so should Trump suspend the federal gas tax? Absolutely not, and Congress should refuse to allow it.
