Prices rose 3.7% over the past year, and 0.6% in September alone, according to today’s new government inflation report. That reading was hot — a tenth of a percent above what economists expected.
Surging gasoline and especially diesel fuel prices were to blame. Gasoline prices rose 9.1% last month, while fuel oil prices rose 15.3%.
President Trump seems to be running out of time to repair the U.S. energy economy before Americans elect the last Congress of his presidency. His last-minute deal to free up 2.25 million barrels of oil from Russia this month seems unlikely to lower diesel prices, given that it represents only a few days of U.S. demand.
Trump in 2024 ran on taming the energy inflation that had plagued President Biden’s last two years in office. He even promised to do the bidding of oil company CEOs if they only steered $1 billion to his campaign.
The Trump administration has spent the past two years executing this energy agenda. It repealed large swaths of the Inflation Reduction Act, ending incentives to build new solar and wind farms and terminating consumer-side subsidies for electric vehicles. Gasoline and diesel are more expensive on an inflation-adjusted basis than they were on