Question

Gasoline prices are "up 63%" under President Joe Biden.

Answer 1

That claim is misleading.

While it is true that gas prices have gone up during Joe Biden's presidency, they have not risen by "63%"

According to PolitiFact, "During Biden’s first week in office, the national average retail gasoline price was $2.39 per gallon. When Rose tweeted, the price had risen to $3.53. That’s an increase of just under 48%, not 63%."

Additionally, a report from NerdWallet states that compared to late October of last year, 2022, to late October this year, 2023, and the gas prices have gone down by a few cents. "When you compare current costs with prices at this time last year — late October 2022 — a gallon of gas is about $0.38 cheaper today, AAA data shows."

Sources:

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2023/nov/02/chris-rose/have-gasoline-prices-risen-by-63-during-joe-bidens/

https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/finance/are-gas-prices-going-down

Comments

Good use of the evidence found and the way of explaining how it can be misleading.

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I agree that the sources you used seem to back up that this claim is exaggerated. I don't understand why they would choose to exaggerate the math itself, which is probably the easiest thing to prove or disprove. Thank you for looking into this!

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I agree that this source is misleading. There is no evidence in the original source to show how it is up 63%. You provided good evidence to show how they exaggerated the math and showing how it could be misleading.

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I appreciate that you both did the math to confirm and you included relevant sources. It is clear that this claim is exaggerated by your fact check. Great job.

Answer 2

This claim is technically true, but misleading.

According to U.S. Energy Information Administration, the average price of gas in 2020 was around $2.17 per gallon. This is not surprising since travel bans, and quarantine were in place. So taking office the following year and seeing the end of pandemic, Gas prices were expected to rise under Biden regardless. According to Y Charts the current price of gas is $3.4 per gallon. At the peak, also according to Y Charts, the price of gas was $5.1 per gallon (6/13/22), which is more than double the price of gas in 2020. However, when applying it to today's price of gas ($3.4 per gallon, 11/5/23) this equates to a 50% decrease in the price of gas, which is a sign of gas prices leveling off due to supply and demand reaching normalcy after the effects of the pandemic. So technically yes, Joe Biden saw the price of gas rise over 100%, most likely due to the increase of demand compared to the production and Russian Ukraine War and the trade ban with Russia.

Comments

I’m not understanding how gas prices rose 100%.

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When Biden took office, the price of gas was around $2.17, and then in 2022, the price of gas rose to $5.10 at its peak under Biden. Mathematically, that is more than a 100% increase since $2.17 + a 100% increase ($2.17) = $4.34 which is still lower than the peak of $5.10 meaning that at a time under Biden, gas prices did see an increase of over 100% (134.10%). I then say that this claim is misleading due to the abnormal circumstances like the pandemic causing the price of gas to be significantly low, and the Russian Ukraine war spiking the price of gas across the globe. Normally you wouldn’t see such a spike under regular circumstances which is why to blame the spikes and dips on Biden is unfair.