The national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline hit $4.06 on Wednesday, April 2, the highest since August 2022. [1] Diesel reached $5.45. [2] The numbers belong to AAA, the automobile association that has been tracking pump prices since before most of the people now paying them were born. They are, as the New York Times put it, "a headache for drivers and Trump." [3]

The trajectory tells the story the milestone cannot. On February 27, the day before the first strikes on Iran, the national average was $2.98. By March 7, it was $3.48. By March 14, $3.59. By March 25, $3.79. By April 1, $4.02. By April 2, $4.06. [1] Each week, the price climbs. No week has produced a reversal. The line goes in one direction, and it has gone in that direction for thirty-five consecutive days.

The 36% increase from $2.98 to $4.06 in one month is the largest monthly spike in at least thirty years, according to financial analyst Charlie Bilello, whose chart of the surge has been shared hundreds of thousands of times on X. [4] The chart is simple: a line that was flat for months, then vertical. The vertical part is the war.

Diesel at $5.45 is the number that matters more than gasoline, because diesel moves freight. Every truck on every highway, every train on every rail, every tractor in every field runs on diesel. The $5.45 figure represents a 58% increase from the pre-war average of $3.45. [2] When diesel rises, everything that diesel moves rises with it — groceries, building materials, Amazon packages, the components that factories need to make the things that other factories put in other trucks.

SmartAsset's state-by-state breakdown reveals the geography of pain. [5] California is above $5.89. Hawaii is above $5.50. Nevada, Washington, and Oregon are above $5.00. The cheapest states — Kansas, Oklahoma, North Dakota — are approaching $3.80, which is where the national average was ten days ago. No state is below $3.50. Before the war, most states were below $3.00.

USA Today published a feature this week titled "Sky-high gas prices are changing the way Americans live," documenting families canceling spring break trips, consolidating errands into single drives, and carpooling for the first time since 2022. [6] The piece described $4 gas as a behavioral threshold — the price at which Americans begin making choices they would prefer not to make.

Five weeks into a war that was never authorized by Congress, that has produced nine stated aims from the president, and that has fractured the NATO alliance, the price at the pump is the war's most democratic metric. It does not require a security clearance. It does not depend on which news source you trust. It is the same number on every gas station sign in every town, and it is $4.06.

-- THEO KAPLAN, San Francisco