Gas prices crossed $4 nationally for the first time since August 2022, driven by the largest one-month price jump in recorded history. The shock — rooted in the U.S. attack on Iran — is forcing Americans to cut commutes, lose customers, skip meals, and rethink how they move.
When Sacramento landscaper Doug Guster fills up his work truck, it costs nearly $100. Over the past few weeks, he told USA TODAY reporters, he has lost five or six customers because he was forced to raise his service prices to cover rising fuel costs. "I didn't want to," he said. "But otherwise it comes out of my pockets, my overhead cost."
Guster's dilemma is playing out in hundreds of millions of similar calculations across the United States. As of April 1, 2026, the national average price of regular unleaded gasoline stood at $4.018 per gallon, according to AAA — the highest it has been since August 8, 2022, when prices were falling from their pandemic-era peak. The milestone arrived after the single largest one-month price jump in the history of GasBuddy's tracking database: a $1.05 increase in thirty days, from $2.98 on February 26 to more than $4.00 by the end of March.
The proximate cause of the price surge is the U.S. military's attack on Iran, which began February 28, 2026. The conflict has disrupted oil market expectations near the Strait of Hormuz — a chokepoint through which roughly 20% of global traded oil flows — and sent crude prices sharply higher.
At the close of trading on March 26, West Texas Intermediate crude settled at $90.32 a barrel, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). The EIA's March 26 short-term energy outlook reported that Brent crude prices are expected to remain above $95 per barrel over the following two months before potentially retreating toward $80 in the third quarter of 2026.
AAA's March 26 bulletin noted that gasoline demand had increased the prior week from 8.72 million barrels per day to 8.92 million barrels per day, while total domestic gasoline supply fell from 244 million barrels to 241.4 million barrels — compounding the supply-demand squeeze.
The price impact has not been uniform. Diesel prices have risen even more sharply. According to SmartAsset analysis, the national average cost of a gallon of diesel increased 50.2% since the same period one year prior, from $3.62 to $5.43 per gallon — a rise that strikes directly at trucking, agriculture, and construction industries that run on diesel fleets.
AAA's April 1 state-by-state data shows the burden falling unevenly. California tops the national list at $5.84 per gallon for regular gasoline, followed by Hawaii at $5.33 and Washington at $5.30. Nevada and Oregon both sit at $4.86. Illinois, the most expensive Midwest state, stands at $4.23.
At the other end, consumers in Oklahoma are paying $3.25 per gallon — the nation's lowest — followed by Kansas at $3.27 and Iowa at $3.31. The geographic spread means the same federal military decision translates into profoundly different local economic pressures.
Amit Verma, a 30-year-old investment professional from Arlington, Virginia, told USA TODAY he paid $70 to fill his 2015 Audi S7 on March 31 before his 35-minute commute to Bethesda, Maryland. He said the cost has him considering switching to the Metro despite adding fifteen minutes to his trip. "It seems like a problem that our administration potentially created for themselves, kind of unnecessarily, and a lot of people gotta pay the price," Verma said.
A national survey released March 31, 2026 by shared-mobility company Veo — based on 2,248 rider responses across its 60-plus city and university markets — found that among riders who own or have access to a car, 68% had replaced car trips with shared scooters or bikes in the past 30 days due to higher gas prices. Among that group, 34% reported doing so frequently. The survey also found that approximately $4 per gallon is the tipping point where demand for shared scooters and bikes begins to accelerate meaningfully.
"Shared scooters and bikes are a more predictable, reliable, and affordable way to get around cities compared to cars," said Candice Xie, co-founder and CEO of Veo, in the company's press release.
CNN reported that the price shock is also forcing tradeoffs between fuel and food. Reporters described Americans cutting back on groceries and, in some cases, reducing the number of meals eaten per day in order to maintain the driving they cannot afford to abandon — particularly those in car-dependent rural and suburban areas without public transit alternatives.
Trump swept into office in 2024 on explicit promises to lower energy costs, including a stated goal of driving gasoline prices to $2 per gallon. During his February 2026 State of the Union address, he touted declining prices as a win. The Iran attack, ordered just days later, reversed that trajectory almost immediately.
Texas-based life coach Michael Bates, a Trump voter filling up a rental Jeep Wrangler near Denver International Airport at $3.69 per gallon, told USA TODAY he hopes the price spike forces a policy reversal. "I'm not very happy with how he's been running things, and I voted for the guy," he said. "And it's going to hurt him if he can't do something about this."
The administration's initial response has been regulatory rather than diplomatic. On March 26, the Environmental Protection Agency issued a temporary waiver allowing higher-ethanol fuel blends — up to 15% ethanol, known as E15 — to be sold nationwide starting May 1. The move, which bypasses a typical summer restriction on E15 tied to air quality concerns, could modestly reduce pump prices for a period. Critics and analysts note that ethanol waivers tend to produce single-digit cents-per-gallon effects, not the dollar-scale relief drivers are experiencing.
The EIA's March short-term outlook projected that Brent crude prices could fall below $80 per barrel in the third quarter of 2026 and approach $70 by year-end — IF the Iran conflict de-escalates and tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz normalizes. That trajectory would translate into lower pump prices by late summer.
But the EIA's 2026 annual average forecast of $3.34 per gallon — issued before prices hit $4 — is now considered outdated by the agency's own subsequent analyses. With crude above $90 and demand entering the high-travel spring season, most near-term forecasts point to prices remaining elevated through at least the end of April.
The national record remains the $5.01 per gallon average set on June 14, 2022, according to GasBuddy. Several high-cost Western states are already within striking distance of that threshold. Whether the rest of the country follows will depend on developments in the Middle East that no energy model can fully predict.
The $4 gallon is not just a data point — it is a behavioral threshold. Surveys, anecdotes, and spending data converge on the same picture: at this price, Americans change what they buy, how they commute, and where they go. Small businesses that run on fuel are passing costs to customers or losing them. Workers in car-dependent regions face a direct tax on their income that no waiver or political statement has yet addressed. The Iran conflict has, for millions of American households, made every trip to the gas station a miniature referendum on U.S. foreign policy.