Gas prices are too damn high, and the Trump administration is looking to do something about it, especially diesel prices. The nationwide average for diesel fuel has reached $6.45 a gallon, while some drivers in Southern California are paying more than $10 per gallon.
Unfortunately, one policy being tossed around is a diesel-export ban, which the president has said his administration is considering very seriously. Such a ban would prevent American oil companies from selling diesel to foreign buyers, creating a temporary domestic surplus, and, presumably, temporary relief at the pump.
Q: What about an export ban on diesel?
Trump: We’re thinking about it very seriously.
We may do it. pic.twitter.com/8B8y2zIQOk
— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 27, 2026
This is a bad policy for more than one reason. Yes, a 90-day diesel-export ban could create a short-lived domestic surplus and offer some relief at the pump. But that relief would be artificial, temporary, and purchased at the cost of a more distorted market afterward. Cheaper diesel would encourage more consumption during the ban, even as refiners and fuel suppliers were cut off from foreign buyers. Then, when exports resumed, the accumulated demand and constrained supply could collide, driving prices back up, potentially above where they started. It is the economic equivalent of putting a lid on a boiling pot for a few minutes.
The damage would also extend beyond U.S. borders. Blocking American exports would tighten supplies abroad and push up fuel costs for allies and trading partners. Those costs would ripple through transportation, food, manufacturing, and consumer prices. The United States would not have solved its energy problem. It would have exported the pain for 90 days, until global markets, as they generally do, sent part of it right back.
There is yet an even deeper problem with the policy: it exposes a growing contradiction at the heart of MAGA economics. The movement often treats America’s status as a major oil-and-gas producer, and, at times, a net energy exporter, as evidence that the country is doing well economically. More energy going out than coming in becomes a kind of national scorecard: America is producing, exporting, and winning.
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But economics is not that simple. What, exactly, has being a net energy exporter produced for ordinary Americans? Cheaper prices at the pump? Certainly not. Lower household energy bills? Not reliably. Greater leverage in global markets? Perhaps, but mostly in the sense that it gives Washington the opportunity to behave like the very oil cartels it condemns, using export restrictions and market manipulation to pursue short-term political aims.
🚨 IT’S OFFICIAL: The US is now on track to pump MORE OIL THAN EVER under President Trump — EIA expects crude production to hit 14.26 MILLION barrels per day in 2027, up 110,000 from its previous forecast
By the end of 2027, output is projected to reach 14.39 million barrels per… pic.twitter.com/rd0t8PDEuL
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) September 28, 2026
All of which raises a simpler question: What, exactly, are we doing here?
It does not create a durable reduction in prices. It does not help conservatives draw a meaningful contrast with the Democratic Socialists of America or the broader progressive left in elections. And it certainly does not restore confidence in market economics. Instead, it hands Democrats another useful precedent: If a Republican administration can restrict exports, manipulate supply, and treat a global commodity market as a political tool, why should Democrats hesitate to do the same, or go even further, when they have power?
So why do it? The administration will certainly have its reasons, but conservatives should have equally clear reasons to oppose it. And that is what we should do, not only here, but every time politicians place their faith in the ever-expanding power of government rather than the discipline of markets.
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