“It’s a gimmick.”
That’s what John Cornyn thinks about banning diesel exports, an idea Donald Trump and Scott Bessent said they’re considering amid soaring prices.
“I’ve said ‘let’s not send out the diesel,'” Trump told reporters on Tuesday, while chatting with his old “friend” Volodymyr Zelensky, who’s in America this week for the UN General Assembly. “I’ve called for it within my people,” Trump went on. “I’ve been talking about it.”
He always says that, or something like it, when queried about ideas he suspects might be popular among key constituencies. In this case, he’s feeling the heat from farm-state Republicans including and especially Chuck Grassley, who this week wondered why this White House hasn’t taken a(nother) page out of the Richard Nixon playbook to impose an export licensing and quota regime on refined products.
“With diesel $6.57 in Iowa, why doesn’t President Trump put an embargo on diesel exports like presidents in the 70s put embargoes on agricultural products because food prices were inflated?” Grassley, who turned 116 this month, wondered on social media. “High diesel prices ARE KILLING FARMERS’ INCOME.” He added a few hashtags: “#cornwatch” and “#soybeanwatch.” I’m sure those are viral.
Nationally, diesel prices hit a fresh record on Tuesday above $6.52. Regular gas averaged $4.47, very close to the Iran-war highs, but still shy of the June 2022 peak north of $5.
Grassley’s talking his book, of course. You could say the same of Cornyn, who represents America’s largest oil-producing state, but he’s a lame duck, having lost a runoff to Texas’s impeached (but ultimately acquitted) attorney general, Ken Paxton.
While Grassley means well — people his age generally do in my experience — he’s wrong on this, which is to say Cornyn’s right, even as he’s just echoing the big oil party line. All an export will do is create a localized surfeit (i.e., excess product around Gulf refineries) while doing little to bring down prices sustainably in other locales.
America produces far more distillate than it consumes domestically, something more than a few lawmakers, to say nothing of industry advocates, have pointed out in recent weeks. As Trump himself put it, “We make a lot of diesel.”
That being the case, banning exports isn’t the solution. And as discussed here last weekend, it could be a serious problem for the rest of the world, which needs another supply shock about like it needs another war. The Kremlin banned diesel exports in July of 2025 and then again over the summer in response to Ukrainian attacks on local refineries.
I’d say Bessent understands the economics of this, and thereby why it ultimately won’t work (and could backfire), but we’re talking about a man who recently tried to bluff the bond market into folding without having the Fed behind him. So I don’t know.
“We’re examining whether it’s feasible in terms of the overall refining capacity and whether a full or partial ban would work,” Bessent said Tuesday, while accompanying Trump at the UN.
Meanwhile, a new AP poll showed nearly half of rural voters think the economy’s gotten worse during Trump’s second term. “The costs of groceries, gas and healthcare rank as top pain points,” the editorial said, adding that rural voters, more so than than voters overall, say they’re “worried about being able to afford groceries or gas.”
And yet, a separate AP poll shows Trump’s approval rating among the same voters (i.e., rural Americans) is around 10ppt higher than among US adults overall.
its nice that at 116 he knows how to use hashtags.