Trump's Oil Stock Holdings Rose Up to $15.5 Million This Year, Democrats' Report Says, as Gas Prices Climbed

Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee released a staff report on Monday, August 24, estimating that President Donald Trump's oil and gas stock holdings gained as much as $15.5 million in value this year, as energy shares rose during the ongoing war between Israel and Iran.

The committee, led in the minority by Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, based its estimate on Trump's 2025 annual financial disclosure, which reported he held between $12.5 million and $45.6 million in oil and gas stocks. Applying an average 39% gain in those holdings through August 17, the committee put the current value at between $17.2 million and $61.1 million, according to CNBC.

Trump's largest reported energy positions include Exxon Mobil and Chevron, according to CNBC, while shares of Valero Energy and Marathon Petroleum, also among his holdings, have more than doubled since the start of the year.

The committee also found Trump bought as much as $3.6 million in additional oil and gas stocks during the first three months of 2026, a window that included the U.S. military operation in Venezuela and the early weeks of the Iran war, according to the committee's release.

The math has real limits. Federal disclosure rules require officials to report assets in broad dollar ranges, not exact amounts, which is why the committee's own estimate spans from $12.5 million to nearly $46 million for the starting position alone. The analysis also assumes Trump held onto every position disclosed at the end of 2025 without any sales or changes, an assumption the committee cannot verify from public records.

The White House's response. White House spokesman Davis Ingle told CNBC that "neither President Trump nor any member of his family has any ability to direct, influence, or provide input regarding how the portfolio is invested or when investments are bought or sold." He said all investment decisions are made entirely by independent managers. The Trump Organization has previously told CNBC that Trump's accounts are fully discretionary and managed by outside institutions with "sole and exclusive authority" over trades, with no advance notice given to Trump or his family. The Trump Organization did not respond to a request for comment on this report.

CNBC has separately reported that Trump disclosed more than 21,000 securities transactions across eight investment accounts in 2025, holding at least $858 million in assets, and has linked JPMorgan Chase, Charles Schwab, UBS and Stephens Inc. to at least four of those accounts.

The bigger number in the report is about consumers, not Trump's portfolio. The committee estimated that major oil and gas producers booked about $125.2 billion in profits in the first half of 2026, while Americans spent an estimated $71.5 billion more on gasoline since the war with Iran began. Chevron reported second-quarter adjusted earnings of $12 billion, its highest quarterly profit in six years, and ExxonMobil reported $14.7 billion, according to the Epoch Times.

Those numbers are why Trump himself, not just Democrats, has publicly complained about oil company profits. Speaking to reporters on August 3, Trump said Chevron and ExxonMobil were making "too much money" and should cut consumer gas prices, according to the Epoch Times. "They're going to give some of that back to the public, and they better cut the retail price, the consumer price," he said. Gas prices had risen to a national average of $4.08 per gallon by early August, up from $3.81 a month earlier and well above the $2.98 average recorded the day the war began, according to AAA figures cited by the Epoch Times.

The president is publicly pressuring the same companies whose stock gains are boosting his own disclosed portfolio, according to the committee's math. Hassan's statement leans hard into that contradiction. "Trump continues to get richer from an illegal war that he started and refuses to resolve, while Americans pay the price for his actions," she said, according to the committee's release. Opinion pieces at MS NOW and Common Dreams pushed the framing further, with MS NOW's Ja'han Jones calling it "self-dealing" and arguing it undercuts GOP attacks on Democrats over economic policy. Common Dreams' coverage used the word "raked in" in its headline, a characterization that assumes intent the underlying disclosure data doesn't establish.

No regulatory body has opened an investigation into Trump's holdings, and no evidence in the JEC report or any other source establishes that Trump directed any specific trade tied to the Iran war. The report is a Democratic committee staff analysis, not an independent audit or a finding by an inspector general or ethics office.

Whether the war itself was necessary or justified is a separate and heavily disputed question the sources here don't resolve. Fox News reported that Trump has called Iran's leadership "crazy" and said the regime would use a nuclear weapon "without question," while a former CENTCOM commander argued for sustained financial pressure on Tehran's "gray zone" networks. None of that reporting addresses Trump's personal stock holdings.

Democrats have said they intend to press further if they retake either chamber of Congress in the November midterms, according to CNBC. Until then, the size of Trump's actual gain, and whether his brokers made any trades tied to information he had access to as president, remains something outside investigators cannot verify from the disclosure forms alone.