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Our only agenda is to publish the truth so you can be an informed participant in democracy. We need your help. More Info ### I would like to contribute One Time Monthly Yearly Join Now ![](\\" ![](\\" Nikki Haley stated on January 17, 2024 in a rally in Rochester, N.H.: Donald Trump “proposed when he was president” that “he wanted to raise the gas tax up to 25 cents.\" ![\\"true\\"](\\" mostly-false/6a6ef6075c162fdccf5eb960e683dcd1.jpg.\\") ![\\"barely- true\\"](\\" false.jpg\\") * New Hampshire * Infrastructure * Taxes * Nikki Haley ![\\"Republican](\\" Republican presidential candidate former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley speaks at a campaign rally Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2024, in Rochester, New Hampshire. (AP) ![\\"Louis](\\" By Louis Jacobson January 19, 2024 ![\\"Samantha](\\" By Samantha Putterman January 19, 2024 # Nikki Haley said Donald Trump wanted to raise the gas tax as president. His support was flimsy. #### If Your Time is short * While president, Donald Trump expressed lukewarm support for a 25-cent hike to the federal gasoline tax to help pay for infrastructure improvements. But he didn’t formalize the idea or pitch it to the public. * During a 2017 Bloomberg News interview, Trump said he’d \"consider\" raising the gasoline tax. The White House later walked back his comments. * In 2018, a Democratic lawmaker said Trump had endorsed raising the gasoline tax during a closed-door infrastructure meeting. Other politicians rebutted this characterization. * Learn more about PolitiFact’s fact-checking process and rating system. See the sources for this fact-check ROCHESTER, N.H. — In the Republican presidential race, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is increasingly aiming her rhetorical fire at the front- runner, former President Donald Trump. In a Jan. 17 town hall at an American Legion hall in Rochester, New Hampshire, Haley said Trump had proposed raising the federal gasoline tax while he was president — a sore point for motorists today. Trump \"proposed when he was president … he wanted to raise the gas tax up 25 cents,\" Haley told the crowd of about 150 attendees. We found two instances during Trump’s presidency in which he appeared to show some support for a gasoline tax hike, which would help pay to repair and rebuild America’s roads and bridges. But we found no evidence that he officially proposed or publicly committed to the idea. PolitiFact has reporters on the ground in New Hampshire this week in the run- up to the state’s first-in-the-nation primary. Haley’s Rochester rally is one of the events we covered by the remaining candidates. Haley’s campaign sent us several news articles about Trump supporting a gasoline tax increase. The vast majority of the reports were about a single closed-door meeting in 2018 that cited a Democratic lawmaker who attended and said Trump endorsed the idea. Taxes have been a sensitive issue for Haley in the primary. A group supporting one of Haley’s rivals, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has aired an ad accusing Haley of raising taxes, which we rated Mostly False. As South Carolina governor in 2015 and 2016, Haley proposed coupling an increase in the gasoline tax with an income tax cut. The proposal didn’t pass during her term. Trump’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. Trump’s position on raising the federal gasoline tax On May 1, 2017, then-President Trump told Bloomberg News that he would entertain a higher gasoline tax to help pay for infrastructure spending. \"It’s something that I would certainly consider,\" he said. The White House quickly walked this back. Then-Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters that Trump wasn’t endorsing raising the gasoline tax but would consider doing so out of respect for an unnamed industry group that raised the idea. \"What the president said during that interview is that folks from the industry had come to him and expressed to him how the deteriorating roads were affecting their ability to deliver goods and services throughout this country, and that they had expressed a willingness to see something like that as a way to help pay for and repair the roads and bridges,\" Spicer told reporters during a briefing. #### Featured Fact-check ![](\\" ![](\\" Donald Trump stated on August 23, 2024 in a speech in Las Vegas “Kamala cast the tiebreaking vote to hire 87,000 new IRS agents to go after your tip income.” ![\\"true\\"](\\" false/33efdb6633e5e2fdc2d4e2f63383a1e0.jpg.\\") ![\\"false\\"](\\" false.jpg\\") By Amy Sherman • August 28, 2024 Then, in January 2018, The Washington Post and other media outlets reported that during a meeting with then-House Transportation Committee Chairman Bill Shuster, R-Pa., Trump had \"privately\" suggested increasing the gasoline tax by 50 cents to fund a national infrastructure overhaul. The reports relied on anonymous sources and said Republican leaders in Congress shut down the idea. We cannot independently verify whether these conversations took place. A few weeks later, on Feb. 14, 2018, one Democratic senator who attended a bipartisan, closed-door meeting on infrastructure at the White House told reporters that Trump had suggested a 25 cent-per-gallon gas tax increase. \"To my surprise, President Trump, today in our meeting, offered his support for raising the gas and diesel tax by 25 cents a gallon and dedicating that money to improve our roads, highways and bridges,\" Sen. Thomas Carper, D-Del., who has supported the increase, said in a statement. \"Trump came back to the idea of a 25-cent increase several times throughout the meeting.\" Shuster, who also attended the meeting, didn’t go as far as Carper in describing Trump’s degree of support, saying that Trump remained \"open\" to raising the tax during the meeting. However, another attendee, then-Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., rebutted Carper’s characterization. \"He was not advocating that. He was looking at all the options,\" Inhofe told CNN after the meeting. \"All he said was we need to do something and that is still on the table.\" The White House declined to address Carper’s characterization of Trump’s comments at the time but told news organizations that all options to help achieve infrastructure improvements were on the table. White House officials told news outlets that the gasoline tax \"has its pros and cons, and that’s why the president is leading a thoughtful discussion on the right way to solve our nation’s infrastructure problems.\" Our ruling Haley said Trump \"proposed when he was president … he wanted to raise the gas tax up to 25 cents.\" On a few occasions, Trump said — or was reported to have said — that he was open to the idea. But that falls short of proposing or publicly backing the idea, as Haley suggested. The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression, so we rate it Mostly False. **RELATED:** Campaign ad from DeSantis PAC says Nikki Haley ‘raised taxes.’ That’s Mostly False. #### Read About Our Process The Principles of the Truth-O-Meter ### Our Sources Rochester, New Hampshire, town hall with Nikki Haley, Jan. 17, 2024 Bloomberg News, Trump open to raising gas tax and negotiating tax overhaul plan, May 1, 2017 Trump White House Archives, Press briefing by Press Secretary Sean Spicer, May 1, 2017 The Washington Post, GOP leaders reject gas tax increase after Trump floats the idea, Jan. 10, 2018 Politico, Trump endorses 25-cent gas tax hike, lawmakers say, Feb. 14, 2018 CNN, Trump suggests 25 cent increase in gas tax, senator says, Feb. 15, 2018 The Hill, Shuster: Trump still ‘open’ to gas tax increase, Feb. 14, 2018 Email interview, AnnMarie Graham-Barnes spokesperson for Nikki Haley’s campaign, Jan. 18, 2024 ## Browse the Truth-O-Meter ### More by Louis Jacobson ![](\\" ![](\\" Jon Tester stated on September 8, 2024 in a Facebook ad: Tim Sheehy “would let politicians like him ban abortion, with no exceptions for rape or to save a woman’s life, and criminalize women.” ![\\"barely-true\\"](\\" th.jpg\\") ![\\"barely-true\\"](\\" barely-true.jpg\\") By Louis Jacobson • September 12, 2024 ![](\\" ![](\\" Donald Trump stated on September 7, 2024 in a rally in Mosinee, Wis.: Vice President Kamala Harris “cast the tiebreaking votes that caused the worst inflation in American history, costing a typical American family $28,000.” ![\\"barely-true\\"](\\" th.jpg\\") ![\\"barely-true\\"](\\" barely-true.jpg\\") By Louis Jacobson • September 8, 2024 ![](\\" ![](\\" Kamala Harris stated on August 22, 2024 in su discurso de aceptación en la Convención Nacional Demócrata: El expresidente Donald Trump “tiene la intención de promulgar lo que, en efecto, es un impuesto nacional sobre las ventas…que elevaría los precios para las familias de clase media a casi $4,000 al año”. ![\\"half-true\\"](\\" th.jpg\\") ![\\"half-true\\"](\\" true.jpg\\") By Marta Campabadal Graus • September 5, 2024 ![](\\" ![](\\" Donald Trump stated on August 23, 2024 in a campaign event in Glendale, Ariz.: “There’s been a 43% increase in violent crimes since I left office.” ![\\"barely-true\\"](\\" th.jpg\\") ![\\"barely-true\\"](\\" barely-true.jpg\\") By Louis Jacobson • September 4, 2024 ![](\\" ![](\\" Kamala Harris stated on August 22, 2024 in her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention: Former President Donald Trump \"intends to enact what, in effect, is a national sales tax ... that would raise prices on middle-class families by almost $4,000 a year.\" ![\\"half-true\\"](\\" th.jpg\\") ![\\"half-true\\"](\\" true.jpg\\") By Louis Jacobson • August 30, 2024 ![](\\" ![](\\" JD Vance stated on August 25, 2024 in an interview on NBC\'s \"Meet the Press\": “Anything that you lose on the tariff from the perspective of the consumer, you gain in higher wages, so you\'re ultimately much better off.” ![\\"false\\"](\\" ![\\"false\\"](\\" By Louis Jacobson • August 29, 2024 ![](\\" ![](\\" Donald Trump stated on August 21, 2024 in a Truth Social post: “The Harris-Biden Administration has been caught fraudulently manipulating Job Statistics.” ![\\"pants-fire\\"](\\" th.jpg\\") ![\\"pants-fire\\"](\\" pants-fire.jpg\\") By Louis Jacobson • August 23, 2024 ![](\\" ![](\\" Donald Trump stated on August 8, 2024 in a press conference: Says his Jan. 6, 2021, speech on the White House Ellipse drew the “same number of people,” as the 1963 March on Washington where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. ![\\"false\\"](\\" ![\\"false\\"](\\" By Louis Jacobson • August 9, 2024 ![](\\" ![](\\" Tim Walz stated on August 6, 2024 in un mitin de campaña en Filadelfia: \"El crimen violento aumentó bajo Donald Trump\". ![\\"half-true\\"](\\" th.jpg\\") ![\\"half-true\\"](\\" true.jpg\\") By Louis Jacobson • August 9, 2024 ![](\\" ![](\\" Tim Walz stated on August 6, 2024 in a rally in Philadelphia: “Violent crime was up under Donald Trump.” ![\\"half-true\\"](\\" th.jpg\\") ![\\"half-true\\"](\\" true.jpg\\") By Louis Jacobson • August 7, 2024 ![](\\" ![](\\" Kamala Harris stated on July 30, 2024 in a rally in Atlanta: Donald Trump “intends to cut” Medicare. ![\\"barely-true\\"](\\" th.jpg\\") ![\\"barely-true\\"](\\" barely-true.jpg\\") By Louis Jacobson • August 7, 2024 ![](\\" ![](\\" Joe Biden stated on August 2, 2024 in a written statement: \"Since Vice President Harris and I took office … incomes have risen faster than prices.\" ![\\"mostly-true\\"](\\" th.jpg\\") ![\\"mostly-true\\"](\\" mostly-true.jpg\\") By Louis Jacobson • August 6, 2024 ![](\\" ![](\\" Kamala Harris stated on July 30, 2024 in an event in Atlanta: \"Donald Trump intends to cut Social Security.\" ![\\"barely-true\\"](\\" th.jpg\\") ![\\"barely-true\\"](\\" barely-true.jpg\\") By Louis Jacobson • July 31, 2024 ![](\\" ![](\\" Pete Buttigieg stated on July 28, 2024 in an interview on Fox News Sunday: “Even before the pandemic, America went into a manufacturing recession.” ![\\"mostly-true\\"](\\" th.jpg\\") ![\\"mostly-true\\"](\\" mostly-true.jpg\\") By Louis Jacobson • July 31, 2024 ![](\\" ![](\\" Kamala Harris stated on July 18, 2024 in a speech in North Carolina: “Today, America has record energy production and we are energy independent.” ![\\"mostly-true\\"](\\" th.jpg\\") ![\\"mostly-true\\"](\\" mostly-true.jpg\\") By Louis Jacobson • July 26, 2024 ### Nikki Haley said Donald Trump wanted to raise the gas tax as president. His support was flimsy. * ![](\\" ![](\\" Sam Brown stated on August 28, 2024 in a campaign appearance: Proposed Nevada constitutional amendment to protect abortion rights would put “essentially no limit on access to abortion.” ![\\"false\\"](\\" ![\\"false\\"](\\" By Caleb McCullough • September 13, 2024 * ![](\\" ![](\\" Jon Tester stated on September 8, 2024 in a Facebook ad: Tim Sheehy “would let politicians like him ban abortion, with no exceptions for rape or to save a woman’s life, and criminalize women.” ![\\"barely-true\\"](\\" th.jpg\\") ![\\"barely-true\\"](\\" barely-true.jpg\\") By Louis Jacobson • September 12, 2024 * ![](\\" ![](\\" Viral image stated on September 8, 2024 in a Threads post: “Elon Musk is going to expose Bill Gates soon, says ‘he’s evil.’” ![\\"false\\"](\\" ![\\"false\\"](\\" By Ciara O\'Rourke • September 12, 2024 * ![](\\" ![](\\" Facebook posts stated on September 6, 2024 in a Facebook post: “Gordon Ramsay calls Tim Walz a ‘woke creep,’ throws him out of Hell’s Kitchen.” ![\\"false\\"](\\" ![\\"false\\"](\\" By Ciara O\'Rourke • September 12, 2024 * ![](\\" ![](\\" Facebook posts stated on September 11, 2024 in una publicación en Facebook: \"ÚLTIMA HORA Río Nilo se pinta de rojo sangre\". ![\\"false\\"](\\" ![\\"false\\"](\\" By Marta Campabadal Graus • September 12, 2024 * ![](\\" ![](\\" Viral image stated on September 7, 2024 in a Threads post: Photo shows Elton John wearing a “MAGA” jacket. ![\\"false\\"](\\" ![\\"false\\"](\\" By Ciara O\'Rourke • September 12, 2024 * ![](\\" ![](\\" Facebook posts stated on September 11, 2024 in a photo: The Minnesota Vikings have denounced Tim Walz: “We don’t suppᴏrt his values.” ![\\"pants-fire\\"](\\" th.jpg\\") ![\\"pants-fire\\"](\\" pants-fire.jpg\\") By Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu • September 12, 2024 * ![](\\" ![](\\" Instagram posts stated on September 8, 2024 in Instagram posts: Immigrants get $2,000 each time they cross the border illegally. ![\\"false\\"](\\" ![\\"false\\"](\\" By Sofia Ahmed • September 12, 2024 * ![](\\" ![](\\" Viral image stated on August 30, 2024 in a Facebook post: Video shows tornadoes in Canada. ![\\"false\\"](\\" ![\\"false\\"](\\" By Ciara O\'Rourke • September 12, 2024 * ![](\\" ![](\\" Instagram posts stated on September 8, 2024 in an Instagram post: Video shows a Ku Klux Klan member at a rally for former President Donald Trump. ![\\"false\\"](\\" ![\\"false\\"](\\" By Ciara O\'Rourke • September 12, 2024 Load more ### Support independent fact-checking. 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Donald Trump proposed when he was president that he wanted to raise the gas tax up to 25 cents