President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s deal to deliver Russian diesel to global markets may be sending shockwaves through the GOP — but don’t expect it to do the same to prices.
Already, multiple House Republicans; key GOP candidates; and two bipartisan groups of senators have pushed back on the move.
The planned imports will “have very little unnoticeable impact on domestic US diesel prices, even if it happens — and I think that’s a big if,” given legal complications and Russian constraints, Bloomberg economist Chris Kennedy, who served on the National Security Council during the Trump and Biden administrations, told Semafor. “If we’re talking 5,000,000 tons of diesel in the entire month of November that Russia has pledged to release … that is one day of US diesel demand.”
He pointed to heating oil futures, observing that “traders appear to be pricing in very little near-term impact.”
The White House pushed back: One official insisted to Semafor that “massive amounts of supply will lower costs for American farmers, truckers and workers.”
“They’re not releasing that [diesel] to us, they’re releasing it to the entire world,” Trump told reporters Tuesday. “Because the world market suffered with high prices — and when you knock out diesel refineries, that’s not a great thing.”
— Eleanor Mueller