CNN analyst unloads damning graph showing futility of Trump’s diesel scheme

What happened

President Donald Trump signed an executive order temporarily waiving penalties for highway use of cheaper red-dyed diesel, but CNN analyst Matt Egan said the measure would provide only modest relief and would not address the forces driving diesel prices. AlterNet reported that diesel averaged about $6.32 a gallon and had risen nearly 80 percent so far that year.

Egan estimated that filling an 18-wheeler cost almost $1,600 and that combined federal and state tax moves could reduce that by roughly $150. He cautioned that it was unclear how much of the savings would reach consumers. The federal taxes were being deferred, not automatically forgiven, although the order directed officials to consider forgiveness.

Several states were reportedly considering their own tax relief. But Egan described the resulting state-by-state patchwork as inadequate for truckers crossing state lines and said federal officials did not expect prices to fall before the midterm elections. AlterNet attributed the broader shortage to limited global refinery capacity, the Russia-Ukraine war and refinery destruction connected to Trump’s war with Iran.

The power sits in Washington

Trump held the institutional power at the center of this story. He could direct federal agencies, alter enforcement and use an executive order to present a rapid response. State governments controlled additional fuel-tax decisions. Truckers, farmers and consumers controlled none of the policies determining whether relief was temporary, fragmented or passed along at all.

That hierarchy matters because the people paying the bills appear mainly as evidence of suffering. A New Jersey trucking-company owner called the measure a late “Band Aid.” Farmers already entitled to use red diesel off-road were reportedly struggling despite that existing advantage. Their hardship supplied the urgency; government officials retained the discretion.

Relief designed around the headline

The order changed a tax penalty at the margin. It did not create refining capacity, repair destroyed facilities or resolve the conflicts AlterNet identified as major causes of the shortage. Even its immediate benefit was uncertain: deferral is not forgiveness, and a nominal tax reduction is not proof that consumers will receive the full savings.

That does not make $150 per fill-up meaningless to a trucking business. It makes the scale of the intervention politically revealing. Against a nearly $1,600 tank and an almost 80 percent annual increase to date, the administration offered limited relief while leaving the underlying price structure intact.

The timing also invited an obvious judgment. AlterNet characterized the order as a pre-election tax holiday, and officials reportedly warned that prices would not fall before the midterms. The action therefore offered Trump a visible response more readily than it offered the public a durable solution.

A patchwork is not a policy

The states considering additional relief included North Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and North Carolina. For an industry built around interstate movement, separate state decisions create uneven benefits along routes rather than a coherent national answer.

Calling that confusion would obscure responsibility. Federal and state officials were making discrete policy choices, each limited by jurisdiction and political appetite. The predictable result was fragmentation imposed on workers whose jobs require them to cross those boundaries.

The graph cuts through the staging

The most useful part of Egan’s presentation was not that the graph looked “damning.” It was that the scale exposed the mismatch between the crisis and the response. Diesel increases of about 20 percent in 2021 and 2022 were dwarfed by the nearly 80 percent rise reported for the current year.

AlterNet’s framing is weakest when it treats the chart chiefly as evidence of Republican electoral futility. That redirects attention from governing power to campaign consequence. The central failure is not that the order may be too small to rescue Trump’s party. It is that people moving food and goods were offered uncertain, temporary savings while the administration left the reported causes of the price shock untouched.

Government by political anesthesia

This is a familiar governing pattern: permit a crisis to become punishing, announce narrow relief near an election and market motion as control. The public receives a complicated promise involving waivers, possible forgiveness and inconsistent state participation. The officeholder receives a signing ceremony and a claim of action.

The distinction is not between action and inaction. It is between using power to alter material conditions and using it to manage political exposure. In AlterNet’s account, Trump chose the latter instrument: a small, late intervention whose most reliable product was the appearance of response.

Thanks to Alter Net

Source: CNN analyst unloads damning graph showing futility of Trump’s diesel scheme