Dec 18 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump took credit during his White House speech on Wednesday night for reducing gasoline prices, increasing power generation, and boosting the coal industry.
Here’s a fact check:
GASOLINE PRICES
Trump said: “Gasoline is now under $2.50 a gallon in much of the country. In some states it, by the way, just hit $1.99 a gallon.”
The facts: The national average price for a gallon of gasoline is $2.896, down from $3.034 a year ago, according to the AAA’s daily survey. The lowest prices can be found in Oklahoma, where the statewide average is $2.343, according to AAA.
The price of gasoline is closely tied to the price of its feedstock crude oil, which has been pressured in recent months by OPEC production increases and slowing economic growth.
POWER GENERATION
Trump said: “Within the next 12 months we will have opened 1,600 electrical generating plants. And it’s a record that won’t be beaten by, I would say by anybody, or certainly not very soon. Prices on electricity and everything else will fall dramatically.”
The facts: Power prices are rising fast amid a proliferation of new electricity-hungry data centers behind AI, a key reason why Trump and his predecessor Joe Biden want to expand America’s power generation.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration, the statistical wing of the Department of Energy, expects that U.S. power generation will have grown by 2.4% in 2025, and another 1.7% in 2026. That growth reverses shrinking U.S. power generation that had occurred between 2010 and 2020, a period when electricity demand was flat.
The EIA data shows, however, that the fastest growth in new generation is coming from solar and wind projects. Many of those projects had been in the pipeline for years and had benefited from federal subsidies that Trump has since cut.
Trump’s administration wants to reduce renewable energy’s share and boost oil, gas, coal and nuclear technologies instead.
COAL REVIVAL
Trump said in his speech that his administration was “bringing back clean, beautiful coal” and was raising the take-home pay of miners.
“After years of record-setting falling incomes, our policies are boosting take home pay at a historic pace… For miners, we’re bringing back clean beautiful coal, it’s $3,300.”
The facts: Employment in the coal industry was around 41,200 in November, down from 42,300 in a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The average hourly earnings of miners was around $35.72 in October, up from $35.65 a year earlier, according to the data.
Coal consumption in the United States, meanwhile, was expected to increase by 9% in 2025 driven by an 11% increase in demand from the electric power sector, according to the EIA.
Coal consumption is expected to fall in 2026 as electric power generation from renewable sources increases, however.
(Reporting by Richard Valdmanis, Editing by Nick Zieminski)
