U.S. Drivers Will Pay $4.25 Gas Most Days Before Thanksgiving 2026

Picture this Thanksgiving: you are driving to grandma's on $4.40 gas so the president can tweet about “standing tough” on Iran and Europe at the same time. The war is still dragging on, tankers are still dodging drones in Hormuz and the Red Sea, and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is on a juice cleanse.

My call: if the Iran war and Red Sea fighting keep grinding at roughly today’s level, national average gas does not just touch $4.25. It moves in and starts paying rent there through Thanksgiving.

This is not the old summer spike story. This is a structural squeeze story: too much war sitting on top of not enough infrastructure, with the last policy cushions already spent.

The bet markets got wrong: Trump blinks

The consensus bet back in March was simple: Trump rattles sabers in Iran, oil jumps, voters scream, and the White House backs down fast. As USC’s Shon Hiatt put it, traders assumed Trump would “chicken out when things got bad.” He did not, and things did.

We are five months in. Brent has punched through $100 a barrel. U.S. crude has camped in the 90s. AAA has the national average for regular at about $4.11, almost a full dollar above a year ago. Diesel, the price that quietly decides the cost of everything in your pantry, is north of $5.20.

That is with markets arguably still underpricing how long this mess lasts. Tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is way down. Houthis in Yemen are taking shots at Saudi tankers in the Red Sea and flirting with an actual blockade. Every ship in that neighborhood now comes with a risk premium and an insurance bill that would make a mortgage broker blush.

Yet traders are still behaving like there is a cease-fire hiding behind the next headline. The expert chorus, from GasBuddy’s Patrick DeHaan to the International Energy Agency’s Fatih Birol, is warning that the real adjustment comes next: $4.20, $4.30, maybe $4.50 national averages if hostilities are just copy pasted into the fall.

The supply crunch no one can spin away

The Iran war and Red Sea attacks are the spark. The reason I think $4.25 becomes the floor rather than the ceiling is where the fire lands.

First, global buffers are basically gone. Inventories that were “amply supplied” back in February are now, in Birol’s phrase, scraping “critically low.” That matters because every new disruption now hits an empty pantry, not a stocked one.

Second, U.S. refining is maxed out. We keep talking about barrels like they flow straight into gas tanks. They do not. They flow into refineries, which Gregory Brew at Eurasia Group politely described as “essentially out of spare capacity.” When you are already running flat out, there is no dial to turn when crude jumps. Every hiccup turns into a price spike.

And we still have hurricane season in front of us. One decent storm in the Gulf that knocks out a major Texas or Louisiana refinery and the problem is not “crude is expensive.” The problem is “there is not enough gasoline” for a few critical weeks.

Third, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is already on stage and sweating. More than 60 percent of the Trump administration’s planned SPR drawdown is complete. The pace has slowed because there is not enough left to dump without spooking markets. You cannot run a permanent emergency release and still call it an emergency reserve.

Put these together and the mechanics look ugly: with Brent camped above $100, WTI in the 90s, inventories thin, and refineries redlined, there is a straight path to gas in the $4.25 to $4.50 band heading into November, even if we do not get a Hollywood tanker disaster.

War, tariffs, and the art of pricing in your own policy

If the foreign policy side was the only fire, you might squint and argue for a soft landing. It is not. The administration has helpfully added tariff fuel.

New and renewed Trump tariffs on dozens of trading partners, including the EU, are a direct sales tax on imported goods and the logistics that move them. Higher shipping and input costs leak into everything from auto parts to food, and they push the same inflation expectations the Fed has been trying to drag back to earth.

Oil is priced globally, in dollars, by traders who watch those expectations obsessively. When they see a White House happy to run a major Middle East war while also rearming the trade war, they do not assume relief. They assume higher for longer.

Here is the conditional bet I am actually making, in concrete terms:

• If the Iran war and Red Sea hostilities stay at roughly today’s intensity through late November, and there is no big cease-fire or maritime security deal, then AAA’s national average price for regular gas will be at or above $4.25 per gallon on at least 20 of the 30 days before Thanksgiving 2026.

That leaves Trump a set of off ramps: aggressive extra SPR draws, a real rethink of the tariff splurge, quiet sanctions relief somewhere else, or a genuine de-escalation in the Gulf. All are technically available. None look politically appetizing to a president who has made backing down the one red line he will not cross.

What could prove this wrong

You can kill this forecast a few ways.

One is demand destruction: the affordability squeeze finally bites, the labor market cools, consumers pull back on travel, and refiners start fighting for volume instead of rationing capacity. That would drag prices back into the high 3s and keep the national average from living above $4.25 for most of November.

Another is a surprise diplomatic turn: a credible maritime security deal in Hormuz and the Red Sea that lets insurance costs fall and risk premia bleed out. Brent would not have to crash, just slide back toward $80 to $90. That alone probably caps gas somewhere below my line in the sand.

Or the administration could go bigger than anyone expects on the policy toolkit: a large, sustained SPR release, plus federal fuel tax relief, plus serious waivers on boutique fuel requirements. That would be noisy, but it would move the pump number, at least temporarily.

I see all of those as plausible, not probable. There is a reason analysts at places like GasBuddy and Politico’s energy desk are already talking about a clear path to $4.25 to $4.50, even flirting with $5, if the conflict just grinds on. The system is tight, the buffers are gone, and the political incentives tilt toward blaming someone else rather than changing course.

The political receipt at the pump

So watch three numbers between now and Halloween: Brent holding above $100, AAA’s national average crossing $4.20 and refusing to come back down, and refinery utilization staying near the ceiling. If those all stick, you are not looking at a spike. You are looking at a new normal.

By the week of Thanksgiving, the question in most households will not be “Who started the Iran war?” It will be “Who is going to pay for this drive to dinner?”

My forecast is that the answer will be the same as it is at every gas station in America: the customer, plus a small convenience fee for believing campaign promises about “cheap energy” in a world where the bombs went off right on top of the pipelines.