Americans have been paying less and less at the pump since gas reached $5 a gallon during the tail-end of the pandemic in 2022. While the national average isn’t quite what it was prior to 2020, it has declined each of the last three years. Will it drop below $3 a gallon in 2025?
Experts predict gas prices will drop in the U.S. in 2025 — the third straight year for a decline.
Uh. No.
At least not according to GasBuddy.com’s Head of Petroleum Analysis Patrick de Haan. He believes the national average for the price of gas will slide to $3.22 a gallon, which is 11 cents less than from this year’s $3.33 a gallon.
DeHaan told CNN that Americans will spend about $115 billion less on fuel in 2025 than they did in 2024. In fact, he suggested that prices won’t get above $3.50 per gallon at any point this year. However, he did hedge slightly on his prediction.
Trump card
He noted the prices could jump if incoming president Donald Trump follows through on his pledge to levy new tariffs on Canada and Mexico.
President-elect Donald Trump reiterated his plan to institute a 25% tariff on imports from Mexico and Canada. That could raise gas prices.
“Trump is a bit of a wildcard. He tends to destabilize the status quo and that increases risk and makes it harder to predict prices,” said De Haan.
For more than half of Americans, the fact that Trump could be seen as a factor in gas prices going up may be a difficult pill to swallow. That’s especially true since one of his big campaign promises has been to lower gas prices. He even promised he would get them below $2 per gallon during a speech in September, CNN reported.
GasBuddy is forecasting prices will stay well above $2 a gallon throughout 2025. Even at the cheapest end of the range of possible monthly prices, GasBuddy only expects the national average to fall to $2.81 in December 2025.
“Our figures are not even on the same planet as what the President-elect has promised,” De Haan said. “We just don’t see the stars aligning for President-elect Trump to realize gas prices that low.”
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