The Diesel Diversion: Trump’s Faulty Attempt to Blame Inflation on Ukraine

The first tanker carrying Russian diesel to the United States since 2022 is expected to arrive in New York within the next few weeks, but its 40,000-ton cargo amounts to less than two hours of American consumption. The shipment will barely register at the pump—and it answers the wrong question, since what drove American diesel past $6 a gallon was never a shortage of Russian supply, but historic bottlenecks from the war in the Middle East.Recall what happened between May and July of this year, when Ukraine launched one of the most destructive phases of its energy war against Moscow, sending waves of drones attacking massive Russian refineries at Kirishi, Ryazan, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, and Omsk one after another. If Russian refining capacity governed American fuel costs, prices at U.S. truck stops should have exploded. Instead, American diesel fell by $1.06 a gallon.With the midterms days away and September’s consumer price index showing fuel oil up a staggering 74% on the year, President Donald Trump has cast Kyiv as the architect of American inflation. “What’s happened in Russia with Ukraine has been really the biggest problem for diesel,” he said in the Oval Office on September...