I wrote yesterday about how wanting to build a ballpark and hold a Major League baseball game in a National Park was perhaps the stupidest idea coming out of an Administration that specializes in stupid ideas.
But…
There’s always new competition coming from the feeble minds of the Trump Regime:
Of course, if Trump is very seriously considering something, you know it’s probably a bad idea (this is not hyperbole - Trump has basically failed at every operating business he’s ever “run” and either been bailed out or just gone bankrupt).
First of all, diesel prices are not high in the U.S. because of lack of domestic supply. In fact, the U.S. (through private companies) is a net exporter of diesel to the world:
Diesel prices are high because, like unrefined oil, it is a global commodity. What happens in say, the Middle East, when say, one country stupidly attacks another country, and the country being attacked has the ability to materially and significantly reduce the supply of diesel, impacts diesel prices everywhere. Of course, most sentient people already knew that.
The Status Kuo Substack has a good take on the problem:
Then there’s the geography problem. The surplus sits on the Gulf Coast, but the highest prices are in the Northeast and on the West Coast, which rely on shipments by water and imports, and in the Great Lakes region, which has had refinery problems. Normally, moving fuel between U.S. coastal regions runs into the Jones Act, a 1920 law requiring that goods shipped between U.S. ports travel on vessels that are U.S.-built, U.S.-owned, U.S.-flagged and U.S.-crewed. De Haan notes that the administration has waived that requirement since March. Under the waiver, shipments from the Gulf to both coasts hit record volumes, yet diesel keeps flowing abroad because foreign buyers pay more. Analysts at the Atlantic Council expect a ban to temporarily lower prices along the Gulf Coast and in the Midwest, but potentially raise them on the West Coast.
Refiners would also likely adapt. They could shift production toward jet fuel or export partially refined product to be finished overseas. “Refineries are just going to try and get around it — they have a business to run,” De Haan told CBS. Analysts at TACenergy warned that losing export markets “would force many plants to cut run rates, and reduce their output of gasoline (and numerous other products) as well, which becomes counterproductive.”
A ban would also push up diesel prices overseas, and those increases could loop back home. Atlantic Council analysts warned that if Latin American farmers and truckers can’t get U.S. diesel, U.S. food supply chains could be disrupted, potentially raising grocery prices. Garrett Golding of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas said resulting price increases “will boomerang back” onto the East Coast and, to a lesser degree, the West Coast. Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group and a former energy adviser to President George W. Bush, told Newsweek that “Nixon-era refined product restrictions will reduce investment in the U.S. oil refining sector.”
The idea is so stupid that even obsequious Trump cabinet members have tried to convince him it is a really stupid idea:
[Energy Secretary] Wright has continued to make the case against a ban. “If you can’t export the diesel that comes out of our refineries, you run out of places to store it, and you have to reduce US refining, which would put upward pressure on gasoline prices and jet fuel prices,” Wright said Wednesday. He said the White House was instead working with refiners to raise domestic supply “in a simpler, voluntary, cooperative fashion, without using blunt instruments that would reduce refining throughput.” He offered no details and said no decisions had been made.
According to Politico, Wright, [Interior Secretary] Burgum and [Treasury secreaty] Bessent all objected to a total ban in internal discussions. Wright also called energy CEOs Tuesday night to warn them a 90-day ban was likely within days. One person familiar with the talks described Bessent as “a good soldier” who “will voice opinions and then march forward.”
Burgum had earlier warned that other countries could retaliate, hitting states that rely on imported fuel. “We stop exporting product, and then somebody says, ‘We’re not going to export to California,’” he told reporters at a G20 energy meeting in Houston on Sept. 14.
Alas, we are dealing with an ignorant and incompetent President whose “ideas” are simply random thoughts that make sense in his malignantly narcissistic mind but which in the real world are just… stupid. And dangerous. And bad for the country and the world.
Finally, to be clear, As I’ve written many times before, a large part of the answer is to move away from energy sources that can be controlled by capital-intensive industries and countries with whom we share little values commonality, and move towards energy sources that are ubiquitous, limitless, and difficult for entities or countries to control.
Sadly, that will have to wait for the next Democratic Administration.
As will getting ourselves out from under the stupid.
