Trump's Russian diesel deal unlikely to ease US fuel prices, experts warn

On Friday, Donald Trump announced a deal with Vladimir Putin to temporarily lift American sanctions on Russian diesel imports, posting on Truth Social that the agreement would bring fuel prices down in "record numbers, and fast." The timing seemed deliberate: US diesel prices have climbed nearly 70 percent since Trump's decision to go to war with Iran, reaching about $6.30 a gallon. Farmers, truckers, and ranchers—constituencies that matter in midterm elections—have felt the squeeze acutely. The package Trump described sounded substantial: 300,000 tonnes of diesel released immediately to American and global markets, followed by 500,000 tonnes in November and another million tonnes after that.

But energy analysts quickly punctured the announcement. The initial 300,000 tonnes, when measured against US Energy Information Administration data, amounts to roughly three-quarters of what Americans consume in a single day. Ashley Kelty, an energy analyst at the investment bank Panmure Liberum, laid out the practical problem: the diesel would need to be loaded onto chartered vessels and transported across the Atlantic. That journey takes about three weeks. By the time the first shipment arrives, the calendar will have turned to late October—just a week before the midterm elections that Trump's party is bracing for. "It is not going to have any impact on prices," Kelty said. "The first amount is so small."

There is another complication lurking beneath the surface. The global supply chain does not operate in isolation. Multinational companies will have to determine which of their diesel supplies originated in Russia and therefore might violate sanctions laws in other jurisdictions, particularly Europe. The Treasury Department suspended sanctions on Russian diesel exports until April 7 as part of the deal, but kept other Russian sanctions in place. This patchwork creates legal and logistical friction that could slow the flow of fuel further.

Maximilian Hess, founder of the political risk consultancy Enmetena Advisory, offered a darker reading of the arrangement. He noted that the full terms of the deal are "highly unlikely to be met" because Ukrainian drone strikes have damaged Russian refining capacity and limited diesel output. "The whole point of the deal for Putin," Hess said, "is that it fails, which he can blame on Ukraine and thus stoke tensions between Trump and Zelenskyy. Indeed, it's already working." The announcement infuriated Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who called it a "weak decision" that would only encourage Russia to keep attacking Ukraine. Trump responded by blaming Kyiv's strikes on Russian energy infrastructure for the fuel price surge and said Ukraine needed "a new leader."

By Sunday, Zelenskyy had shifted tone, saying he would halt attacks on Russian oil refineries if Russia curbed its assaults on Ukrainian energy infrastructure. Trump then posted that an "energy ceasefire" had taken effect immediately, with both parties in agreement. But the sequence of events—the deal announced, the Ukrainian president blindsided, the blame exchanged, the ceasefire declared—suggested that the diesel agreement was doing precisely what analysts feared: widening the gap between Washington and Kyiv rather than lowering the price of fuel. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent insisted the deal was "good for the American people," but the experts studying the numbers saw something else: a gesture that would arrive too late, in quantities too small, and with consequences that extended far beyond the pump.