While California politicians screamed bloody murder about Trump’s tariffs being a “tax on Americans,” they’ve quietly slammed their own residents with the highest gas burden in the nation — over one dollar and twenty-five cents per gallon in taxes, fees, and hidden costs.
That’s not a typo.
Here’s exactly what you’re paying every time you fill up in California:
- 61 cents – State excise tax
- 18 cents – Federal excise tax
- 10 cents – Sales tax (varies by location)
- 2 cents – Underground storage tank fee
- 25 cents – Cap and Trade
- 17 cents – Low Carbon Fuel Standard
Total: $1.25 per gallon — ripped straight out of your pocket.
This isn’t some abstract policy debate. This is money taken from working families, truck drivers, single moms, and small business owners every single time they pull up to the pump. And the same people who lose their minds over tariffs somehow think this is perfectly fine.
Let’s talk about the hypocrisy for a second. When Trump put tariffs on foreign goods, Democrats called it a tax on Americans. They said it would raise prices and hurt regular people. Fair enough — that’s how tariffs work.
But using that exact same logic, what the hell do you call stacking $1.25 in government costs on every gallon of gas in California? It’s a tariff on California drivers. They just gave it prettier names — “cap and trade,” “low carbon fuel standard,” “environmental fee.” Lipstick on a pig is still a pig.
The difference? Trump’s tariffs were aimed at other countries. California’s version is aimed squarely at its own citizens. And it’s working — Californians pay more at the pump than drivers in almost any other state in the union.
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This isn’t about roads anymore. The state excise tax was supposed to fix infrastructure. Instead, Sacramento keeps inventing new ways to take your money under the banner of fighting climate change. Cap and trade and the low carbon fuel standard were sold as programs to make polluters pay. In reality, you’re the one paying — every time you need to drive to work, pick up your kids, or haul your tools to a job site.
And here’s what really burns: these costs hit hardest the people least able to afford them. The working class. The folks who can’t work from home. The families already stretched thin. Meanwhile, the politicians who voted for all this drive around in their subsidized electric cars and lecture everyone else about saving the planet.
California has become a laboratory for one-sided economics. Politicians can scream about national tariffs being evil while defending the most expensive gas in America. They’ll call one a crisis and the other a virtue, depending on who’s in the White House.
Enough. It’s time to call it what it is. $1.25 a gallon in government take isn’t environmental leadership — it’s a tariff on California families. And no amount of fancy rebranding changes that fact.
Drivers are tired of being treated like an ATM every time they fill the tank. If Sacramento wants to keep piling on costs, they should at least be honest about what they’re doing: taxing their own people into the ground while pretending it’s for the greater good.
The numbers don’t lie. $1.25 per gallon says it all.
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