Trump Is Looking for Diesel in All the Wrong Places

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Gasoline prices have been up all summer, as have jet-fuel prices, as have home-heating-oil prices—but nothing has jumped quite like diesel. The average price for a gallon of diesel in the United States just hit an all-time high of $6.27, almost double what it was in late February. It’s no secret that the Iran war is largely responsible for America’s energy woes. So far, Donald Trump’s strategy has been to downplay these increases as temporary side effects (a “little glitch,” he said in March) and remind everyone that oil prices were higher under Joe Biden (which is true). Lately, though, the president has been telling us to look away from Iran and toward a different war.

Over the weekend, he called on Ukraine’s president to stop striking Russian oil refineries, which he said was “causing a shortage of diesel.” And yesterday morning, he announced a partial energy cease-fire between the two countries, claiming that the “World’s Diesel price rise is mostly caused by the Russia/Ukraine War, not Iran.” (Although both Ukraine and Russia have signaled that they’d be open to such an agreement, they continued attacking each other last night.) Focusing on Eastern Europe may be a convenient distraction tactic, but the reality is that this war is ultimately less important for U.S. diesel than the one that Trump is waging in the Middle East.

Diesel’s rally has to do with how it’s distilled. Diesel, like gasoline, primarily comes from crude oil, which has been in short supply since the Strait of Hormuz was effectively shut down in February. Middle Eastern crude, which is sludgy and sulphurous, is particularly conducive to producing diesel. Making matters worse, many local refineries have been attacked or have preemptively gone offline, leaving the region less equipped to handle the crude that remains. Yemen’s Houthis attacked a major Saudi facility last week as a prelude to a broader offensive.

The refinery problem is global. At their summer peak, the world’s facilities were producing 4.2 million fewer barrels a day than they were last year. As Trump has pointed out, Ukrainian attacks on refineries in Russia—usually the world’s second-largest diesel exporter—have only compounded the issue. With Moscow maintaining its ban on diesel exports (meant to protect domestic supply), more countries are turning to the U.S. to make up the difference. American plants are now “running all-out,” per the American Petroleum Institute, using almost all of their processing power, and the U.S. is exporting more refined-oil products on average than it was last year. U.S. refineries typically shut down for at least a couple of weeks for maintenance around this time of year, too, which could potentially squeeze supply even more.

Still, Matt Smith, the director of commodity research at the data firm Kpler, told me that Ukrainian aggression “isn’t equally to blame, let alone the leading factor,” in America’s rising diesel prices. Even if Russia and Ukraine agreed to a cease-fire today, global refining capacity wouldn’t magically return right away. As I wrote in May, damaged facilities take time to repair and come back online once they’ve been shut down. Gregory Brew, an energy historian and a senior analyst at Eurasia Group, told me that for any détente to have an effect on diesel prices, “it would likely need to last several weeks at least.” Meanwhile, the situation in the Middle East remains unstable. The Saudi Arabian government recently shut down a crucial pipeline that was damaged in a strike by Iran-aligned militias in Iraq (the pipeline had been moving 4 to 5 percent of the global oil supply—several million barrels a day). Combine these risks with elevated seasonal demand for diesel, which in the U.S. tends to peak around the harvest season, and it’s clear that the European conflict is only one force among many behind this price spike.

Americans are feeling the effects. One gas station in San Diego has been selling diesel for $9.99 a gallon, which is as high as its three-digit physical display will permit. Groceries may become more expensive because farm equipment and refrigerated 18-wheelers tend to run on diesel. Trains predominantly use diesel, too, and railroads’ fuel surcharges on grain shipments have more than doubled over the past year. Nearly 5 million homes could be paying more for heating oil (which is chemically similar to diesel and subject to some of the same economic pressures) as well.

As everyday costs continue to climb, voters are growing more and more dissatisfied with Trump’s handling of the economy. And over the past few months, the president has been looking for someone—anyone—to share the blame. A speedy Trump-negotiated end to the Ukraine war is unlikely for many reasons. But even in the fantasy world where he pulls that off, it wouldn’t save him from a diesel spike of his own creation.

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Today’s News

A federal judge blocked the Kennedy Center from adding Donald Trump’s name to the building or its grounds. The judge ruled that such changes require congressional approval, reaffirming an earlier decision that led to Trump’s name being removed from the center.
In a hearing today, the House Financial Services Committee questioned Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent about inflation, national debt, and rising borrowing costs as he defended the Trump administration’s economic policies. The 10-year Treasury yield briefly reached 5.04 percent this morning, its highest level since 2007.
Russia and Ukraine launched new attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure overnight, shortly after Trump said the two countries had agreed to halt such strikes. The Kremlin described the halt as a proposal still under discussion, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine would stop its attacks if Russia did the same.

Dispatches

Work in Progress: Trump’s position on AI makes no sense, Rogé Karma argues.

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Evening Read

photo of black-and-white printed photo of woman sitting at classroom table — Amy Elkins for The Atlantic

Sons and Mothers

By George Packer

When I was 13, not long after my father had committed suicide, I asked my mother, “What’s the Oedipus complex?”

“Why?” she replied at once. “Are you afraid you’ve got it?”

Maybe. I wasn’t aware of wanting to murder my father, but in the four years after he suffered a massive stroke at 43, he’d been a volatile presence in our house, given to bursts of rage and tears, or rendered ominously mute by his paralysis. When he disappeared on December 6, 1972, leaving my mother, my sister, and me, I was troubled by a sense of profound relief. Unable to understand, let alone forgive, myself, I went searching for insight on the shelves of my parents’ narrow, high-walled study. Books offered a way to replace real self-knowledge with an official version—the idea of “guilt” instead of the intolerable feeling itself. In a volume called Oedipus: Myth and Complex, amid thickets of psychoanalytic jargon, I found what I was looking for.

Read the full article.