In November 2020, experts came out of the woodwork to dismiss the idea that gas prices would skyrocket under Joe Biden as conservatives predicted.
“A dubious meme has emerged online in conservative circles: The price of gasoline will spike because Joe Biden is taking office,” the Washington Post reported in November 2020. The meme featured a gas station with gas prices of over $5.00/gal, but the author dismissed the meme, insisting that “although a president’s actions — including Biden’s climate policies — can nudge the price of oil, the effect is marginal at best, experts say.”
But perhaps even worse than the media’s endless efforts to absolve Biden of responsibility for skyrocketing gas prices is just how wrong his administration was in understanding the energy crisis and how little they understood the consequences of their energy policies.
According to a report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration that was released in December, a mere six months ago, they anticipated gas prices to average $2.88/gal this year.
U.S. regular gasoline retail prices averaged $3.39 per gallon (gal) in November, a 10 cents/gal increase from October and $1.29/gal higher than in November 2020. The November monthly average was the highest since September 2014. We forecast that retail gasoline prices will average $3.13/gal in December before falling to $3.01/gal in January and $2.88/gal on average in 2022.
According to AAA, the national average price for a gallon of gas is $5.016 as of Tuesday. Gas prices have more than doubled since Biden took office.
Was the Biden administration really that incompetent? Did they really believe that tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserves would send gas prices down? The Biden administration blames the Russian invasion of Ukraine for gas prices, but gas prices had been going up well before the invasion, so no one actually buys that talking point.
So congratulations, Biden administration, for being so ridiculously way off with your “prediction.”
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