In a brazen attempt to play the markets and pay lip service to Americans feeling the squeeze at the pump, President Trump proposed suspending the federal gas tax. However, the move would likely do little to address the underlying causes of the spike in gas prices, including price gouging and supply chain shortages due to Trump’s war in Iran.
Make no mistake: Trump’s proposed gas tax suspension is nothing more than another massive giveaway to big oil and the same wealthy executives who are price gouging American consumers and families at the pump. The root cause of this crisis is no secret to anyone. It’s greedy oil executives seeking to squeeze every last penny from working Americans’ pockets and using the supply shock caused by Trump’s unnecessary war in Iran. Instead of another giveaway to the same forces making life for everyday Americans increasingly unaffordable, Congress must put pressure on Trump to end this war and crack down on price gouging.
In the last 5 years, the top ten American oil and gas corporations raked in a record breaking $677 billion in pre-tax profit. During that period, rather than lowering costs for consumers these corporations spent $452 billion of that profit on shareholder payouts in the form of stock buybacks and dividends. They also spent an additional $2.75 billion on just their top 5 corporate executives’ compensation. We have reliable 2025 tax data on eight of these ten corporations-- and six of them paid single-digit or negative effective income tax rates.
It's vital the 'gas tax' issue be approached from an economic management standpoint in that suspending the tax doesn't affect supply and thus the price of gas to the consumer doesn't change
In other words, the price structure of gas is a balance between 'supply and demand' such that the price is the 'market clearing' price balancing the two
Unfortunately, most influencers, leadership, and journalists haven't grasped this relationship
I keep hearing this at state level. Look it helps to fix roads and why don’t we focus on some price gouging that is going on. I know that gas was $5.00 a gallon across the border in Ohio where it is usually cheaper. And somehow people were blaming the PA gas tax for the high cost of gas in Pennsylvania where it cost less than Ohio.