The price increases caused by President Donald Trump's decision to go to war with Iran have made a lot of Americans unhappy with him. When he's been asked about the inflation or the unhappiness, Trump has repeatedly responded with lies — fictional stories about how low prices supposedly were before the war.
It's not like people can't remember what they were paying for things less than three months ago. But the president has concocted a fantasy — of sub-$2 gas, sub-2% inflation, and generally reduced prices — that bears little resemblance to the actual state of the country prior to the first strikes against Iran on February 28.
Here's a look at Trump's comments and the truth.
Trump told members of Congress at a White House picnic on Tuesday: “We had — inflation was at 1.6% for the last three months just prior to the war.†That “1.6%†figure was a little lower than the figure he cited in comments to reporters last week: “If you go back to just before the war, for the last three months, inflation was at 1.7%.â€
Neither number is accurate.
The year-over-year increase in the Consumer Price Index was 2.7% in November 2025, 2.7% in December 2025 and 2.4% in January 2026. The inflation rate was 2.4% again in February 2026, for which nearly all the data was collected before the war began on the last day of the month.
The rate jumped to 3.3% in March 2026 and 3.8% in April 2026.
Trump has not limited himself to claiming there was very little inflation before the war. Rather, he has also declared that prices had decreased before the wartime spike in oil and gas prices.
“We inherited high prices and we got the prices down, and we got them down to numbers that in some cases people have not seen before,†he said at the Tuesday picnic.
“Look, prices are down, but the energy caused it to go up,†he said in a Fox News interview last week. “You know, when they talk about high prices, I inherited the high prices. I'm getting them down; I've got them down incredibly,†he said in another Fox News interview last week. “Outside of the gasoline, prices are way down. Prices have come down,†he told reporters in early May.
Trump could fairly say that some products had declined in price since the beginning of this presidency in January 2025; eggs, one item he has repeatedly mentioned, are a good example. But the president keeps talking as if overall prices were down before the war — or even are down overall today — and that is clearly not true.
Even before the war, far more products had increased in price during this administration than had decreased in price. Through February 2026, average prices were up 2.9% overall since the beginning of Trump's second term, Consumer Price Index figures show.
Through April 2026, the most recent month with available data, there had been a 4.8% overall increase in average prices since January 2025.
“You know, I had gasoline down to $1.85 in Iowa,†Trump told reporters Tuesday while talking about the pre-war economy. “I was in Iowa, and the stations had it at $1.85. But I was down to, in many cases, less than $2.00 a barrel — a gallon.â€
“We had numbers that nobody's seen in a long time. So you had $2 a gallon,†he told reporters on May 7. “We were down — I think you were $1.85, $1.90 in Iowa, and a lot of other places.â€
Nope.
The national average for a gallon of regular gas on February 28, the day the war began, was not close to $2 a gallon; it was $2.98 per gallon, according to data provided by AAA. No state had an AAA average lower than Oklahoma's $2.47 per gallon that day. And while there might have been some stations somewhere in the US selling gas for under $2, there were, at most, extremely few of them.
Four days before the war, on February 24, CNN asked the price-tracking firm GasBuddy how many stations nationwide were selling for under $2 per gallon that day (aside from special discounts). As of that night, the answer was… four stations out of roughly 150,000 the firm was monitoring. Patrick De Haan, GasBuddy's head of petroleum analysis, told CNN on Wednesday there would have been “the same or fewer stations†under $2 on February 28, as overall prices were trending upward at the time.
As for Iowa? Its average price for regular gas on both February 27 and February 28 was $2.64 per gallon, according to AAA. On the day Trump visited the state in late January, the state average was $2.57 per gallon; GasBuddy found just four stations in the state selling that day for under $2 per gallon — $1.97, to be specific, not “$1.85†— out of 2,036 stations the firm was tracking there. And a CNN reporter noticed that the station right outside the venue where Trump spoke was at $2.69 per gallon that day.
It's possible Trump was referring to the price of E85, an ethanol-gasoline blend that is sold in a minority of gas stations and can only be used in the small percentage of vehicles that are compatible with it; the blend was selling for around $1.85 per gallon in Iowa at the time of his visit. But that would be misleading, since Trump simply spoke of “gasoline†and offered no indication he was talking about a niche product.
The AAA national average for regular gas was up to $4.56 per gallon on Wednesday. Iowa's average was $4.28 per gallon.
