Trump has prioritized oil and minerals. Lower prices haven’t followed.

President Donald Trump promised to ramp up natural resource drilling and mining as a way to create jobs and cut Americans’ energy bills. His administration has acted on the pledge, but the results have mostly fallen short – in some cases because of other administration policies that undercut attempts to lower energy costs.It’s now easier for natural resource companies to lease federal land and get drilling permits. Oil and gas production have reached new records, continuing a boom that predates the president’s second term. But energy-sector jobs are down, and electricity and fuel prices are up.Mr. Trump pledged “energy dominance.” But economics and geopolitics play a huge role in determining energy prices, meaning a U.S. president’s actions can’t guarantee lower costs. In addition, some of his non-energy policies – such as the war in Iran – have contributed to the higher prices. Why We Wrote This President Donald Trump has aimed big with moves ranging from domestic deregulation to a deal for Venezuelan oil. But other factors, notably his war in Iran, have pushed some key energy prices up. As a result, Republicans are now facing headwinds as the November midterms approach, with many voters saying their top concern is rising prices.In a January survey, when prices were relatively low, the Pew Research Center found that 34% of Americans were “very concerned” about the price of gasoline. By July, that share had surged to 56%. A Reuters-Ipsos poll in late August found that nearly half of registered voters (47%) considered the cost of living the single most important factor in deciding their election choices. The Trump administration last year agreed to loan Constellation Energy Corp. about $1 billion to prepare the Unit 1 reactor at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island (shown above, in 2011) for restart. The nuclear facility's Unit 2 reactor was the site of the country's worst nuclear disaster in 1979. Republican leaders in the House aim to bring to a vote next week the Ratepayer Protection Act as a way to show voters their concern for rising energy costs, Axios reported on Thursday. The bipartisan bill concerns data centers, whose demand for electricity can be a driver of household electric bills.“Your bills will be less than half”Mr. Trump pledged to create new energy-related jobs, but employment in that sector fell in 2025, according to a new report. In August 2024, during his campaign to retake the White House, he promised to slash Americans’ energy bills, saying that “your bills will be less than half.”Instead, they’ve gone up. The average American household will spend some 13% more on energy this year than in 2004, according to a Monitor calculation based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data and Energy Information Administration (EIA) data and forecasts. That’s a projected increase of $624 this year for gasoline, electricity, and natural gas. For homes in the Midwest and Northeast using natural gas for winter heating, the increase is larger.Market forces can work independently of a president’s policies, says Heather Hurlburt, formerly the chief of staff to the U.S. trade representative during the Biden administration, and now an associate fellow at Chatham House, a London-based think tank. But some of Mr. Trump’s non-energy policies have contributed to the higher prices.The clearest example is gasoline. When Mr. Trump took office on Jan. 20, 2025, the national average price of unleaded gas stood at $3.12 a gallon, according to AAA. A year later, prices had fallen 9%, down to $2.85. Analysts expected oil prices to fall. A month later, however, the administration – along with Israel – initiated a war against Iran, and prices soared and now stand at an average of $4.29. Diesel fuel prices, which affect the cost of shipping goods, topped $6 a gallon on Sept. 11, up about $2.35 from this time last year.The cost of natural gas has also risen. Average residential prices for the first half of this year are up nearly 17% compared with the same period two years ago, before Mr. Trump took office.Boosting fossil fuelsThese price increases have come despite administration moves to boost electric generation from fossil fuels and nuclear power. In April 2025, the president declared a national energy emergency, and the administration has used a series of 90-day orders to keep open decades-old coal-fired plants that were slated to close. In November, the administration closed a $1 billion loan to Constellation Energy Corp. to restart the Unit 1 nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. (Unit 2 at the facility was the site of the nation’s worst nuclear disaster in 1979.) On Sept. 8, the Department of Energy closed a $1.9 billion loan to reopen Iowa’s only nuclear plant. Lawrence Allison pumps $175 of diesel into his pickup truck's gas tank at a station in Carlsbad, California, Sept. 10, 2026. The average price of a gallon of diesel fuel topped $6 this week. The administration also launched this summer a $17.5 billion loan program to jump-start the building of 10 new large-scale reactors.Instead of the cost of electricity falling, however, the EIA expects this year’s average residential price to be 18.2 cents/kWh, compared to 16.5 cents before Mr. Trump took office.Much of the rate-setting and permitting happens at the local and state levels, tying a president’s hands. And many of the projects in which the administration can play a leading role involve plants and other facilities that won’t come online until after the president’s term is over.In what Mr. Trump touted as a more short-term move, U.S. forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January and flew him to the United States to face drug-trafficking and other charges. President Trump then convinced the remaining leadership there to give America control over Venezuelan oil in exchange for private investment.On Sept. 2, oil giant Chevron agreed to invest more than $7 billion in Venezuela’s crumbling energy infrastructure. Every other major U.S. oil company declined, despite the president’s inducements, leery of sinking money into such a politically volatile country.President Trump has opposed solar and wind power, which account for most new power investment in the U.S. They’re cheaper to build and faster to bring online than either coal or nuclear power, and analysts say, because of that, they could potentially help lower energy costs for Americans.Seeking mineralsIn February, the administration announced Project Vault, a $12 billion effort to store dozens of critical minerals that are crucial to various industries. The idea is that the stockpile can help domestic companies ride out supply-chain disruptions.“Project Vault is a necessary and well-designed buffer,” Gracelin Baskaran, director of the critical minerals security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said during congressional testimony in May. But “the harder work of building the supply chains, processing capacity, and demand mechanisms that make that buffer unnecessary over time still remains largely ahead of us.”Critical minerals are tricky for policymakers, because no one solution fits all, concluded a May report by the World Economic Forum and the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. “Too many interventions are broad, familiar and politically attractive, but not necessarily well matched to the actual barrier holding back investment.”The answer, Dr. Baskaran says, is an international partnership, where allies pool their demand and ensure that an entire supply chain exists to extract and process minerals, bypassing Chinese processing. For example: A global shortage of copper, which hit record levels this week, would be eased if U.S. copper ore producers took advantage of excess Japanese smelter capacity rather than relying on cheaper Chinese smelters. But Mr. Trump’s tariffs on imported copper make that choice uneconomic.New proposed copper tariffs, which would raise the cost of electrical equipment, automobiles, construction, and other products, have caused a backlash from a bevy of copper-consuming industries.The Trump administration has also proposed an international supply-chain initiative in rare earth minerals to counter Chinese processing dominance. But its escalating tariff war with Canada has prompted that country’s prime minister, Mark Carney, to say Canada would not join before a new North American trade treaty is negotiated.The copper situation highlights another factor that complicates Mr. Trump’s efforts: the back-and-forth nature of his decision-making. For months, companies have been importing copper into the U.S. to beat expected tariffs. When word leaked that the administration was reconsidering those tariffs, copper prices fell 4% in a single day.“Uncertainty is a real killer for investment,” says Alan Krupnick, a senior fellow at Resources for the Future and formerly senior economist on the Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton administration. That plays out across industries, he says. For example, oil companies are hesitant to invest in new oil wells and refining facilities because prices could crash if the Iran war ends.“So, even if Trump inadvertently may have, through this war, increased oil prices, which helps the industry in the U.S., it comes with so much uncertainty that very little of that actually translates to action.”