Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told lawmakers Wednesday that gas prices will start to come down once the Iran conflict concludes – and could plummet to below pre-war levels.
“I think the conflict will end, I think gasoline prices will come back to where they were or perhaps lower,” Bessent said during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing.
“President Trump has shown that he is good at getting energy prices down,” the treasury secretary added.
When pressed by Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) on “how fast” prices at the pump will fall, Bessent reiterated that it depends on “when the war and the conflict end.”
“Well, from the perspective of the Armed Services Committee, it’s not likely to end soon,” Reed said.
The average price of a gallon of regular gas hit $4.02 on Wednesday, which is slightly lower than last week’s $4.10 average, but more than $1 higher than the $2.98 average on Feb. 28, the day Trump launched Operation Epic Fury in Iran, according to AAA.
Under former President Joe Biden, gas prices hit an all-time record high of $5 per gallon in June 2022, which Trump has regularly referenced to boast about the prices at the pump under his administration.
During the hearing, Bessent also defended the sanctions relief the Trump administration has granted Iran and Russia to free up “more than 250 million barrels” of oil on ships at sea.
“The way to think about this is, as I came in today, oil prices are at $100, if we had not done that sanctions relief they may have been at $150 – the world became very well supplied,” he said.
“The American consumer has been better off.”
