President Donald Trump said late Tuesday at the U.N. General Assembly in New York that he supports a temporary ban on diesel exports.
'I’ve said let’s not send out the diesel. We make a lot of diesel. I’ve called for it,' Trump said, as U.S. diesel prices hit an all-time high this week.
The average U.S. diesel price stood at $6.52 per gallon on Sept. 23, according to the report. California’s average reached $8.43 per gallon, and some stations reportedly hit $9.999 on retail displays. The U.S. gasoline average was $4.47 per gallon, a post-July record high.
The case for a ban is simple on its face: keep more fuel at home and prices may ease for farmers, truckers and other consumers. But analysts quoted in the report said the short-term relief would likely come with larger costs.
They said forcing diesel to stay in the U.S. would create a domestic glut, fill storage, and push refineries to cut operations. Because refineries do not switch neatly between diesel, gasoline and jet fuel, lower diesel output would also mean less gasoline and jet fuel.
That chain reaction would then pressure crude producers to slow activity as well, the report said, making fuel tighter rather than looser. Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, said: 'If diesel exports get banned, [gasoline] prices could rise toward record levels.' He added: 'The U.S. is not short of diesel. The world is. A potential export ban treats the global price problem as if it was a U.S.-only problem, and the cure would be far worse than the disease.'
Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Wednesday that a ban would hurt U.S. refining and push up most fuel prices. He suggested voluntary restrictions or some kind of export cap instead. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum also argued a week earlier that a ban would not help lower prices.
The report said the U.S. supplies about 20% of the world’s global diesel exports, according to the American Petroleum Institute. API CEO Mike Sommers said: 'Restricting U.S. exports would hit an already-tight market with another supply shock.' He added that the priority should be 'keeping fuel moving and refineries running, not adding new barriers.'
The deeper issue is leverage. The report said the U.S. spent years becoming the world backstop for diesel supply, and that telling buyers from South America to Europe that American supply is politically conditional could push them to diversify away from U.S. refineries and U.S. supplies.
That is the real cost Washington rarely prices in: once free enterprise is treated like a political switch, capital and customers start looking elsewhere. Refineries, producers and shippers operate on rules, not slogans. If the administration wants lower fuel prices, the market has already shown what happens when supply gets constrained: margins tighten, output falls and the taxpayer, farmer and trucker pay more.
