Don't Hit Diesel

Brand: affordability. Method: run a seven-month Middle East war, then blame Kyiv for the fuel that prices the grocery truck. Personal practice: lecture Ukraine about diesel while Hormuz stays a risk premium and the pump keeps setting records.

When “hurting the world” only applies to someone else’s target list, it isn’t energy policy. It’s selective outrage with a receipt.

Exhibit A: The Silent Partner Hits $6.45

Gasoline gets the campaign ads. Diesel gets the economy.

Christian Science Monitor’s reporting today: the national average for diesel hit a record $6.45 per gallon this week — roughly 74% higher than a year ago. Baker Institute energy fellow Mark Finley called diesel the “silent partner”: embedded in trucking, rail, harvest equipment, school buses, and the freight that stocks shelves. Gulf Oil’s Thomas Kloza’s line lands harder: we’ve never found the demand cliff for diesel the way drivers cut trips when gas climbs.

NBC’s Friday snapshot put regular gas at about $4.46 — within a dime of this year’s high, up roughly 50% since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28 — and diesel at $6.44, up about 71% since the war began. Shipping giant CMA CGM announced a new emergency fuel surcharge tied to renewed escalation in Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb. Independent Grocers Alliance math cited in the Monitor: when fuel costs jump 10–15%, retail food can climb 2–4%.

You don’t need a diesel pickup to pay the diesel bill. You need a grocery cart.

Exhibit B: “This Isn’t Done by the Middle East”

Sept. 13, from a golf-course gaggle in Ireland, Trump’s governing theory of the pump:

“Mr. Zelenskyy has to do one thing. He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia.” Plenty of other targets. “Don’t hit diesel fuel, because that’s hurting the world.” And the absolution clause, per NBC, Reuters, Al Jazeera, and PolitiFact’s write-ups: the spike “isn’t done by the Middle East” — it’s Russia and Ukraine.

Ukrainian strikes on Russian refining are real and do tighten diesel. PolitiFact’s sourcing even quotes analysts attributing a large share of the recent spike to those hits, with Hormuz risk as the rest. Fine. Adults can hold two facts.

The hypocrisy is the selective sermon. The same White House that spent months selling “temporary exception: oil” and “drop like a rock when the war is over” now needs a villain who isn’t the war it started in February — the one that closed or crippled Hormuz flows for much of the year, invited strikes on regional energy infrastructure, and, per the IEA’s September read, is still blocking a return to normal Persian Gulf and Red Sea traffic. Christian Science Monitor notes U.S. strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure as part of the diesel story too. Schmitt’s analysis, cited there: Hormuz disruptions compounded the diesel squeeze; Russia’s export ban after Ukrainian hits made it worse.

So the sequence is: light a Middle East war → watch diesel and gas rip → tell voters it’s temporary / small / foolish to notice → when records print, point at Zelenskyy → announce the Middle East isn’t the driver.

That is not diagnosis. That is blame laundering.

Exhibit C: The Calendar Moved to Election Day

For months the pitch was: fuel falls when the Iran war ends. More recently, NBC reports, Trump conceded the timeline: “Right after the election, oil prices are going to be tumbling downward” (Sept. 9).

Parse it. Affordability is no longer indexed to victory. It’s indexed to November. Households can enjoy $4.46 gas and $6.45 diesel as a midterm appetizer while the promise relocates from the battlefield to the ballot.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, per the Monitor, waved off a diesel-export ban this week: if it would bring prices down, they’d have done it. Senate Majority Leader John Thune floated restricting exports; the administration isn’t buying. Short-term tools are scarce, analysts say — which makes the “hurting the world” lecture look even cheaper. If you can’t open Hormuz and you won’t touch exports, yelling at Kyiv is the affordability policy that fits in a sound bite.

Also still on the shelf: the old $2-gas boast. Unleaded hasn’t lived under $2 since the pandemic crash. Markets can falsify slogans every morning. Record diesel falsifies them at the loading dock.

Now Aim at Everyone

If a Democratic president ran on kitchen-table prices, opened a multi-theater energy war, then told the country the pump was Ukraine’s fault while Mid-East chokepoints stayed broken, this site would say the same thing. Process that only applies to the other tribe is not process.

Democrats have their own fuel theater — sudden discovery of Hormuz when a Republican holds the map, selective amnesia about how freight inflation works, and donor-class comfort with “temporary” pain when the war branding is theirs. Pretending only one coalition treats household budgets as a campaign prop until governing makes them inconvenient is how audiences miss their own perfume.

Also true: Ukraine has a right to hit the infrastructure funding the army occupying it; Iran policy is a real strategic fight; diesel is a global commodity. The adult critique is whether the stated cost-of-living promise survives contact with the wars you own and the excuses you invent. The immature critique is calling $6.45 a Kyiv problem while Hormuz remains a risk premium you helped create.

The Questions Worth Asking

If diesel shortages “hurt the world,” why does that sentence apply to Ukrainian drones and not to a seven-month U.S. war that IEA still ties to broken Gulf and Red Sea normalization?

If the spike “isn’t done by the Middle East,” what exactly are $100 oil, emergency shipping surcharges, and a 50% jump in U.S. gas since Feb. 28 measuring?

If oil tumbles “right after the election,” what calendar should households use for the grocery aisle — and who eats the freight premium until then?

And if Burgum won’t restrict diesel exports because it wouldn’t help, what exactly is the Zelenskyy lecture supposed to deliver besides a different scapegoat?

The Final Word

Cost-of-living politics deserves boring honesty: wars move oil; oil moves diesel; diesel moves food. What we got was a presidential scolding of Ukraine for hitting the fuel that powers Russia’s war machine — delivered while American diesel printed an all-time high and the Iran war kept the map on fire.

Own the trade-off in daylight — this cocktail of conflicts is worth $6.45 diesel and a quieter grocery bill later — or drop the affordability costume. The pretending is the corrosive part. And this week, the costume came with a new instruction: don’t hit diesel. Unless the target is convenient to deny.

— Hypocrisy Democracy

Receipts

Record diesel / silent-partner economy: Christian Science Monitor

Gas near yearly high, diesel records, Iran-war % moves, CMA CGM surcharge, “right after the election”: NBC News

Trump tells Zelenskyy to stop hitting Russian diesel / “hurting the world” / “isn’t done by the Middle East”: Reuters, NBC News, Al Jazeera, and PolitiFact

Pump / household war-cost context (prior week): Center for American Progress

Originally published on Substack.