President Donald Trump made rising utility costs and Americans’ concerns about energy affordability a central tenant of his pitch to voters during the 2024 presidential race.
“If you vote for me, I will cut your energy and electricity prices in half within 12 months,” Trump told a rally audience in Indiana, Pennsylvania, in late-September 2024, comments that were echoed upwards of a dozen times throughout the campaign.
Nearly a year into his second term in office, however, Americans’ utility costs are rising — and likely to continue growing next year, a new report finds.
The report, written by Tyson Slocum, director of the energy program with the progressive think tank Public Citizen, analyzes government data collected by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) to reach a startling conclusion: Americans collectively paid about 22% more on natural gas during the first nine months of 2025 than they did during the same period the previous year, equivalent to an increase of about $124 per family or $12 billion in total.
According to the analysis, increased exports of liquified natural gas (LNG) are overwhelmingly contributing to the domestic price increase.
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“This is because of the huge role that natural gas exports play in constricting domestic supply and demand and exposing Americans to higher prices,” Slocum told reporters Tuesday. “Just eight LNG export terminals now use more natural gas than all American families do that utilize gas utility service.”
The finding represents yet another piece of data pointing to worsening economic outcomes for most Americans, as polls find Trump voters increasingly souring on the president’s economic policies.
Asked about the report and Americans’ broader concerns about increasing energy prices, the White House sought to frame higher costs as a consequence of Democratic policies.
“High energy prices are a choice – Blue states like California and Maine stubbornly chose Green Energy Scam projects that made electricity bills unaffordable. Meanwhile, GOP-led states have acted, successfully lowering energy costs for their residents by embracing President Trump’s commonsense ‘DRILL, BABY, DRILL’ agenda,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told Scripps News in a statement. “Fixing Joe Biden’s energy crisis has been a priority for President Trump since day one, and lowering energy costs for American families and businesses will continue to be a top priority in the new year.”
A White House official went on to argue that increased energy costs are “caused by failed projects started by the last administration.” The official, who asked not to be identified, also pointed to recent comments from Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum questioning the benefits of renewable energy.
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“Intelligence factories require 2 power sources–renewables when they work, baseload when they don’t,” Burgum wrote. “It's inefficient, irresponsible & we can do better than this.”
Administration officials have also called into question the partisan leanings and financial backing of groups critical of administration policies; Public Citizen, for example, receives funding from prominent left-wing donors and has backed several lawsuits against Trump administration policies – though its new LNG analysis relies almost entirely on government data.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), a Democrat and longtime supporter of more aggressive measures to address climate change, sought to frame the rising energy costs as a result of corporate greed.
“The reality is that the only people profiting from our LNG exports are fossil fuel traders like Exxon and Shell who are trying to artificially create demand and exploit volatility when it arises,” Markey told reporters.
Pointing to a recent Trump administration announcement concerning gas efficiency requirements, Markey argued that, “the oil and gas industry are getting everything they want, and it's electrical generation, it's automobiles, SUVs, and it's going to create, ultimately, an energy crisis for ordinary consumers.”
In 2024, then-President Joe Biden temporarily paused all LNG exports, and his administration at the time said federal regulations didn’t properly account for their impact on “considerations like potential energy cost increases for American consumers.” Biden also framed the pause as needed to address climate change, suggesting it would help “adequately guard against risks to the health of our communities, especially frontline communities in the United States who disproportionately shoulder the burden of pollution from new export facilities.”
Yet while the Public Citizen report proposed additional pauses on LNG experts, it stopped short of calling for a pause on new domestic LNG development – mirroring a broader Democratic trend of retreating from some bolder climate policies as Americans bristle about higher energy costs.
Asked about that distinction, Slocum told Scripps News that his “point is that the transition takes time, and in the meantime, the clear congressional mandate should prioritize the public interest, and not the financial interest of natural gas companies or exporters.”
Such policy prescriptions seem unlikely to take hold in the short term, however. Projections from EIA expect a 9% increase in LNG exports in 2026.
