Electricity costs went up in 2025 despite Trump's promise to halve prices

3/18/2026: Updated to include comment from the Trump White House.

During his 2024 campaign, President Donald Trump repeatedly promised that if voters returned him to the White House, his policies would quickly slash everyone's energy bills in half. A new congressional report, however, finds that the average American family is paying more in electricity costs than before Trump's second presidential term.

In a report released on March 17, the minority staff of Congress' Joint Economic Committee says that the average American household's total annual electric bill rose by $110 between 2024 and 2025, a 6.4% increase.

Offering few specifics as to how, Trump told the Economic Club of New York in September 2024: "My plan will cut energy prices in half or more than that within 12 months of taking office. It will be an economic revival of our country like no one has ever seen before. Energy was what caused our problem initially. Energy is going to bring us back. That means we're going down and getting gasoline below $2 a gallon, bring down the price of everything from electricity rates to groceries, airfares, and housing costs."

Under President Joe Biden, Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, both of which included significant federal investments in clean energy infrastructure. Since taking office, Trump has worked to undo as much of those provisions as possible, halting solar and wind energy projects, canceling $8 billion in clean energy projects, and repealing much of the unspent Inflation Reduction Act money for clean energy.

"American families don't need a report to tell them that the President has broken his campaign promise to slash energy costs; they already feel the impact of President Trump's actions every single day. But this report is yet another indication that sky-high costs are continuing to rise – and are continuing to hurt American families," said the Joint Economic Committee's ranking member, New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan, in a statement.

"Lowering electricity prices is a top priority for President Trump, and he is aggressively unleashing reliable energy sources like coal and natural gas to reverse the catastrophic damage that Joe Biden did to our power grid," said White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers in an emailed statement. "Blue states that refuse to implement President Trump's commonsense energy dominance agenda will continue to see prices rise at astronomical rates like they did under Joe Biden."

In Pennsylvania, families saw their electricity bills increase 12.1%, paying $210 more in 2025.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, average national gasoline prices have not dropped below $2 in any week since Trump returned to the White House. The lowest price was $2.779 in January.