President Donald Trump said Monday he would consider raising the federal tax on gasoline to help pay for infrastructure spending that is core to his economic plans.
“It’s something that I would certainly consider,” Trump told Bloomberg News. A higher gas tax has the support of truckers “if we earmarked money toward the highways,” he claimed.
The current federal levy is 18.4 cents a gallon on retail gasoline and 24.4 cents a gallon for diesel, according to the Energy Information Administration. The average state tax on the fuel was 27.3 cents as of Jan. 1.
The federal government has not raised the excise tax on gasoline since 1993. Revenue from the levy go to the Highway Trust Fund, which pays for road construction and mass transportation.
Gasoline prices have remained relatively low in recent years amid a nearly three-year downturn in the cost of crude oil, the raw material for most fuels. The average price at the pump in the United States on Monday was $2.371, up about 15 cents from a year ago, according to GasBuddy.com.
U.S. gasoline futures have been trading lower in recent weeks as tepid demand and high refinery activity have contributed to rising U.S. stockpiles of the fuel. They were down about 1.7 percent on Monday.
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