Democrats on the congressional Joint Economic Committee released an issue brief on Monday estimating that President Donald Trump’s holdings in oil and gas companies gained between $4.6 million and $15.5 million between January 2 and August 17 of this year.
The brief works from Trump’s 2025 annual financial disclosure, which the committee’s minority staff read as reporting between $12.5 million and $45.6 million in oil and gas company stock. Federal disclosure forms record assets in ranges rather than exact amounts, a limit the brief notes in its own footnote. Staff then tracked daily closing prices for those holdings through LSEG Data and Analytics and found an average increase of 39 percent over the period, which would put the same portfolio at between $17.2 million and $61.1 million as of August 17.
The steepest increases in the brief’s table are at refiners. Marathon Petroleum rose 117 percent and Valero Energy 110 percent between January 2 and August 17. Phillips 66 rose 84 percent. Exxon Mobil and Chevron, the two largest holdings by reported value, rose 32 percent and 30 percent, and Occidental Petroleum rose 39 percent. The table lists nine companies by name and adds a footnote naming 44 further oil and gas companies that appear in the disclosure and are counted in the totals without being broken out individually.
The estimate rests on an assumption the committee states plainly: that Trump continued to hold the positions listed at the end of 2025. Because the disclosures use ranges, an exact gain cannot be calculated from them, as CNBC noted in its report on the findings.
Staff also reviewed transactions from the first three months of 2026 and put additional purchases of oil and gas stock at as much as $3.6 million. The brief says those purchases included Chevron shares bought in the weeks after the United States operation in Venezuela, a period in which, the brief states, the company was moving to use oil rights it holds in that country.
The gasoline figure
The same document totals what drivers have paid. The committee puts additional national spending on gasoline at $71.5 billion since February 28, the date it uses as the start of the war with Iran, an average of $604 per family. The figure is built from daily average pump prices published by AAA through August 17, state gasoline consumption data from the Federal Highway Administration, and national demand data from the Energy Information Administration.
A state table runs through all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The largest per-household increases listed are Wyoming at $875, Alabama at $864, Utah at $838, Mississippi at $807 and Montana at $803. The smallest are the District of Columbia at $268, Washington at $412 and Oregon at $415. Texas carries the largest statewide total at $7.2 billion, followed by California at $6.7 billion.
On company earnings, the brief puts combined profits at more than 20 major oil and gas companies at $85.2 billion for the second quarter and about $40 billion for the first, or roughly $125.2 billion across the half year. Chevron’s own quarterly filing reports $12.1 billion in second-quarter earnings and $12.0 billion adjusted. Exxon Mobil’s second-quarter results report $14.5 billion in earnings and $14.7 billion adjusted.
The responses
Senator Maggie Hassan, the committee’s ranking member, said in the release accompanying the brief: “President Trump continues to get richer from an illegal war that he started and refuses to resolve, while Americans pay the price for his actions.”
White House spokesman Davis Ingle told CNBC: “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 added: “All investment decisions are made entirely by independent managers.”
The Trump Organization has previously told CNBC that the investments sit in fully discretionary accounts run by independent financial institutions holding “sole and exclusive authority” over investment decisions, and that Trump and his family receive no advance notice of trades. The organization did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment on the brief.
CNBC has separately reported that Trump disclosed more than 21,000 securities transactions in 2025 across eight investment accounts holding at least $858 million in assets, and has linked at least four of those accounts to JPMorgan Chase, Charles Schwab, UBS and Stephens Inc.
The brief does not state that Trump directed any of the purchases it describes.
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