How Trump's promise to slash energy bills in half has failed across the US

Donald Trump has comprehensively failed to meet a key election promise to slash Americans' energy bills in half within the first year of his presidency, with power prices instead surging across the US.

The average household electricity bill in the US was 6.7% more expensive in 2025 compared with the previous year, according to a Guardian analysis of data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the Department of Energy's statistical arm. The increases meant that, on average, US households paid nearly $116 more across 2025 than they did in 2024.

The power bill increases have been extreme in many parts of the US, with residents of Washington DC experiencing the biggest increase, a 23% jump in electricity costs, followed by Indiana, with a 17% rise, and then Illinois, with a 15% increase, the EIA data shows.

On top of soaring electricity bills, US households have also been confronted by rising gas prices, which have jumped 5.2% on average in the past year, according to the EIA.

This all means that, with just days until the first anniversary of his inauguration, Trump has missed his self-imposed target of cutting bills in half in his first year. The president's promise to slash power bills was, along with similar pledges to cut grocery costs and to reduce immigration to the US, a key pillar of his 2024 election triumph.

"You have some states where the power bills are instead up 10% or 20%, which is why so many people are angry about this now," said Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (NEADA). "Instead of reducing electric bills by 50%, the president's actions have raised the cost of home energy for all Americans. It used to be the poorest Americans who struggled with their power bills, but now we are seeing more and more middle-income families who have to make sacrifices to avoid being shut off."

During his election campaign, Trump repeatedly vowed to tackle power bills. "I will cut the price of energy and electricity in half," he said at one rally in Detroit in October 2024. "12 months from January 20 – I take office on January 20 – your electric bill, including cars, air conditioning, heaters, everything, the total electric bill will be 50, 5-0 per cent, less."

Trump told voters at a separate event that "your energy bill within 12 months will be cut in half. I'll have your energy bill down within 12 months, throughout the country … That's my pledge, all over the country."

But this rhetoric has sharply reversed as electricity has replaced eggs as the most-talked-about area of inflation, with Trump recently claiming that the affordability crisis is a "hoax" and a "fake narrative" invented by his political enemies. On Tuesday, the president said he had overseen the "greatest first year in history" for the economy.

"The administration is tone-deaf about this – the president said it's all made up, when it is in fact quite clear," said Wolfe. "Families are struggling to pay energy bills and yet the Trump administration's actions have made it worse."

The administration's energy policy has centered on ramping up the drilling of oil and gas—already at record levels in the US—while tearing up environmental rules that delay projects and limit the amount of pollution Americans are exposed to. Trump has also embarked upon the aggressive promotion of an artificial intelligence industry that is raising US electricity demand for the first time in decades, while at the same time blocking numerous renewable energy projects he calls a "scam" and a "con job" but were set to provide electricity for millions of American homes.

"The fundamental dynamic is that we are using more electricity than we did 12 months ago and the infrastructure isn't keeping pace with that extra demand – if anything, we have fallen further behind," said Abe Silverman, an expert in the energy transition at Johns Hopkins University.

In December, Trump halted construction of five windfarms off the east coast, a move that has been challenged in the courts. "We have not approved one windmill since I've been in office, and we're going to keep it that way," Trump said this month.

Electricity bills are now a "major" source of stress for more than a third of all Americans, polling has found, with colder-than-expected temperatures this winter pushing up heating bills by 9.2% on average compared with a year ago.

"Trump and Republicans are making life more expensive by taking energy options off the grid while demand skyrockets," said Jesse Lee, senior adviser to Climate Power, a climate advocacy group. "We're going to make sure that every Republican who rubber-stamps Trump's anti-energy agenda pays the political price in 2026."

A White House spokesperson said that lowering energy prices is a "top priority" for the president and said that Democratic-run states have seen higher costs than Republican-led states. "The Trump administration will continue to aggressively implement President Trump's energy dominance agenda because cheaper energy can unleash unprecedented growth in every facet of our economy," she said. "Are blue states going to adopt President Trump's commonsense energy agenda to bring energy prices down in their states?"