Well it isn't exactly "because" of the USA your gasoline is expensive. Gasoline production isn't fixed--they increase or decrease it based on consumption.
Gasoline in the USA is artificially cheap (and yes we should stop complaining)--because it isn't and hasn't been taxed properly for decades, as opposed to other countries who have been more successful at doing so. And by not doing so--use (or "need"), and thus dependence on cars, is therefore incentivized massively.
And the result is for everyone to see. The USA is compltely addicted to cheap gasoline--if it isn't cheap our country collapses. There's no way of travelling most of the country without a car and gasoline. There's basically no public transit, and outside of the NYC/DC corridor there's zero passenger rail. There's no money for it. Further the gas taxes we do collect--don't pay for the maintenance cost obligations of the absurd and comical amounts of roads infrastructure the US has.
If you think taxes should be
Pigouvian, that is the tax should cover the negative externalities at a minimum...The US federal gasoline tax doesn't even cover the economic damage from the motor-vehicle deaths that happen annually. IIRC the price of a human life was somewhere around $10,000,000, and there are something like 40,000 motor vehicle involved deaths annually.
