What Americans Are Saying About Gas, Groceries and the Cost of Living

A man stood beside a petrol pump in the South Texas heat and watched the numbers climb.

His name is Quinten Martinez. He is 28 and works as an Amazon delivery driver. The question he asked an Associated Press reporter was not about Iran or the Strait of Hormuz. It was about getting through the week.

“Is it going to be groceries this week?”

Or would the money have to go into the car so he could get to work?

I read that exchange from Karachi and stopped.

Wars look different when viewed from thousands of kilometres away. We normally see missiles and maps. Presidents appear behind lecterns. The economic effects arrive more quietly.

A number changes on a petrol-station sign. A truck costs more to operate. Eventually, someone stands in a supermarket and puts something back.

The Iran war has entered American homes in precisely that way.

The War at the Petrol Pump

The United States is a major oil producer, but American consumers remain exposed to the global petroleum market.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported substantial disruption to Middle Eastern energy supplies during August. Production shut-ins in the region averaged an estimated 6.7 million barrels per day during the month.

American motorists can see the consequences.

EIA data show the average U.S. retail price for all grades of gasoline reaching $4.455 a gallon in the week ending September 14. The Associated Press reported that AAA’s national average reached about $4.48 on September 18.

Diesel tells another part of the story.

Its national price moved above $6 a gallon in September. That matters even to Americans who never put diesel in their own vehicles. Trucks carry much of what households buy. Higher freight costs can eventually move through warehouses and shops before appearing in the price paid by the consumer.

The Congressional Budget Office examined the economic effects of the conflict this month. It identified reduced oil and natural-gas shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, along with disruption to Red Sea shipping, as important channels through which the war has affected the U.S. economy.

Higher petroleum prices raise household energy costs directly. Some of the shock then travels farther through transport and production.

This is no longer only a forecast of what a prolonged conflict might do.

It is happening.

August’s Consumer Price Index gives the effect some scale. U.S. consumer prices rose 0.4% during the month and were 3.4% higher than a year earlier.

Gasoline increased 3.9% in August and accounted for more than one-third of the monthly increase in the overall index. Energy prices stood 16.3% above their level a year earlier.

Food prices increased more slowly. They were 2.7% higher than a year earlier.

That difference matters.

It would be misleading to blame every expensive grocery item on the Iran war. American food prices respond to many forces. Tariffs and other pressures can also affect inflation.

What the war has clearly done is add an energy shock to an economy where many households were already sensitive to prices.

CBO estimates that higher energy costs associated with the conflict added 2.3 percentage points to the annualised rate of overall PCE inflation during the second quarter of 2026. It expects some indirect effects to persist because energy costs take time to work through the wider economy.

The war did not create America’s entire cost-of-living problem.

It made an existing affordability problem harder.

More Than $750 Per Household

Brown University’s Climate Solutions Lab has attempted to calculate what the additional fuel burden means for Americans.

Its Iran War Energy Cost Tracker compares actual gasoline and diesel prices with an estimated path for prices had the conflict not occurred.

By September 7, its researchers estimated that Americans had spent more than $100 billion in additional gasoline and diesel costs since February 28.

That worked out to more than $750 for the average U.S. household.

The number requires caution.

It is not a government measurement of an additional $750 bill actually received by every household. It is a modelled counterfactual estimate. Researchers construct an estimated no-war price path and compare it with observed fuel prices.

The federal evidence nevertheless points in the same general direction. CBO independently concluded that disruptions associated with the conflict have increased energy prices and put upward pressure on American consumer prices.

Washington records the war in appropriations and military expenditure.

Families encounter another part of its cost at the petrol pump.

What Americans Are Saying

Statistics explain the economy. People explain what the economy feels like.

Dan Lloyd is a 63-year-old carpenter in Arizona who voted for Donald Trump. He was paying $4.39 a gallon to fill his pickup when reporters spoke to him.

“The American people eat it every time,” he said.

His frustration extended beyond petrol. Food costs concerned him too, as did interest rates.

Yet Lloyd also said he expected to vote Republican in the midterm elections.

That detail matters.

Economic pain does not translate automatically into political behaviour. An American can dislike the economic consequences of a policy while continuing to support the party responsible for implementing it. Another voter may reach a different conclusion.

Garth Johnson, a 35-year-old Michigan businessman who also voted for Trump, faces the problem through his company. His cleaning operation uses petrol-powered vehicles as well as diesel equipment.

“I’m a little guy and I’ve got to live my life,” he told reporters.

Other Americans see the issue differently.

Texas business owner Kristin Jimenez argued that Americans have experienced expensive petrol under presidents from both parties. She questioned why consumers tolerate costly discretionary purchases while objecting to petrol around $4 a gallon. Fuel prices, she said, would not determine her vote.

There is no single American reaction to the war.

There is measurable anxiety about affordability.

A Fox News national survey conducted September 11-14 among 1,211 registered voters found that 61% considered gasoline prices a major problem for their household. Groceries registered slightly higher at 62%.

Earlier Ipsos research also showed how households respond when fuel prices and general living costs increase. In June, 53% of Americans said they cut non-essential spending. Thirty-nine percent said they postponed larger expenses.

That is where an energy shock becomes a consumer shock.

A family does not need to understand Brent crude futures to change its behaviour.

Someone drives less. A household delays replacing an appliance.

Across millions of people, such decisions become an economic force.

Social media provides a rougher view of the same anxiety.

Recent Reddit discussions about inflation and fuel prices contain Americans arguing that official inflation statistics do not match their experience of paying for everyday necessities. Other commenters focus on whether high fuel prices will eventually retreat or become embedded in the price of other goods.

These discussions are useful, but only up to a point.

Reddit cannot tell us what America thinks.

It can tell us what some Americans are talking about.

Why Petrol Changes the Way People Think

Petrol occupies an unusual position in household psychology.

Its price sits in enormous numbers beside roads. Drivers may see it every day, even when they are not filling the tank.

The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco examined this relationship in August. Its researchers found that when households revise their expectations for gasoline prices upward, their expectations for overall inflation also tend to rise.

The relationship was particularly strong among lower-income households and people with less education.

The researchers found something else.

The psychological effect appears asymmetric.

When expected petrol prices rise, inflation expectations tend to rise with them. When expected petrol prices fall, consumers do not reduce their inflation expectations by an equivalent amount.

People notice the increase.

They do not forget it as quickly when prices retreat.

The University of Michigan’s preliminary September consumer survey points in the same direction. Its Consumer Sentiment Index fell from 51.7 in August to 47.8 in September.

Year-ahead inflation expectations jumped from 4.0% to 4.6%. Before the Iran conflict began, the February reading had been 3.4%.

Survey director Joanne Hsu identified the resurgence in fuel prices, alongside trade tensions, as a source of increased pressure on consumers’ financial expectations.

The deterioration was not confined to one political camp. Michigan reported sizeable declines among Democrats and Republicans, while sentiment among independents changed little.

Economic statistics and economic psychology do not always travel together.

Inflation measures how quickly prices are changing.

Households remember the size of the bill.

A slower increase in an already expensive grocery basket does not necessarily feel like relief.

“A Very Inexpensive Price to Pay”

President Donald Trump addressed the cost directly during remarks in North Carolina.

Speaking about higher gasoline prices associated with the Iran conflict, he said:

“It’s a very inexpensive price to pay.”

Trump argued that the military campaign was necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. His administration presents higher fuel costs as part of the price of pursuing that national-security objective.

Americans are free to judge that trade-off differently.

The conflict also remains part of a continuing war-powers dispute in Congress. On September 15, the House voted 220-204 on another resolution intended to end U.S. military operations against Iran. The measure has not become law.

Meanwhile, the direct military bill continues to grow.

CBO estimates that U.S. military operations against Iran had cost the Department of Defense approximately $38 billion by August 1.

The agency attaches considerable uncertainty to that estimate. It says the Defense Department did not provide the information CBO requested, forcing analysts to rely on other sources and assumptions.

CBO also warns against casually adding its various estimates together because they measure different economic effects across different periods.

That warning is worth remembering.

War produces numbers that look wonderfully precise on a screen.

Life is messier.

From Hormuz to the Kitchen Table

I keep returning to Quinten Martinez at that Texas petrol station.

Not because one Amazon driver’s experience represents more than 340 million Americans. It plainly does not.

His question interests me because it reduces a complicated geopolitical conflict to household arithmetic.

Groceries or petrol?

The route between those two expenses runs surprisingly far.

It begins around the Strait of Hormuz and other disrupted shipping routes. It moves through crude markets and refineries.

Diesel trucks carry the shock farther. Warehouses and shops eventually feel it too.

Finally, part of the cost reaches a family’s weekly budget.

Washington debates whether the strategic objectives justify that cost. Americans are reaching different conclusions about the question.

The economic evidence establishes something narrower.

The war is imposing costs beyond the battlefield.

CBO can estimate military expenditure. Brown can model the additional household fuel burden.

BLS can measure inflation.

None of them can make Quinten Martinez’s decision for him.

He still has to stand at the pump and decide what the household can afford this week.