Faced with a choice in Washington DC on Friday between backing his beleaguered fellow Republicans in America’s midterm elections or siding with his friends in the oil industry, President Donald Trump voted firmly to assist America’s petro giants.
That he did so with the full backing of Britain and other G7 governments was the icing on the cake for a US leader who once again succeeded in getting his allies to dance to his latest chosen tune.
For the past fortnight, Trump has been besieged by Republican candidates begging him to introduce a temporary embargo on American exports of diesel. Facing possible annihilation at the polls in exactly one month’s time, candidates for House and Senate seats in key electoral battlegrounds wanted Trump to take urgent action to stabilise soaring diesel prices that are hitting truckers and farmers in swing states hard.
For a while, Trump played along. He was “thinking about it”, he said, and “looking at it very seriously”. But in fact, he was pursuing another idea entirely.
After his own energy chief dismissed the proposed embargo as a “blunt hammer”, the president successfully persuaded G7 leaders to agree to the release of 100 million barrels of their diesel and oil reserves. In a statement the group’s leaders hailed the plan as “decisive, co-ordinated measures to stabilise immediate energy supplies, shield households and businesses from price shocks, and strengthen the long-term resilience of global energy systems”.
Trump was cock-a-hoop, taking to social media on Friday to proclaim that “Europe has just agreed to release a massive amount of their heavily stocked Diesel Oil. The process will begin immediately”. He made no reference to any impact that the move might have on diesel prices in America, nor to the tsunami of lobbying efforts by oil companies that encouraged the White House action.
Last week, the American Petroleum Institute thundered that the proposed embargo would “wreak havoc on fuel markets at home and abroad, destabilise refinery operations and deepen a global refining crisis already putting upward pressure on US prices”.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent signalled the US move in a posting on X on Thursday. Europe, he said, should “make additional supplies immediately available” in order to help American farmers and businesses to avoid “carrying the burden of a global diesel shortage”.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham, represented at the G7 meeting by Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband while the UK’s new leader attended his father’s funeral, can now breathe a sigh of relief that the mooted export ban has melted away.
Britain relies on the US for around one-sixth of its diesel requirements (Photo: Alishia Abodunde / Getty Images)Britain relies on the US for around one-sixth of its diesel requirements. The mere existence of calls by Republicans to reserve American diesel for American customers only had already sparked talk in London about the possibility that rationing may eventually be needed in the UK.
But every barrel of oil in any country’s stockpile can only be released once without being replenished, and as a direct result of Trump’s war on Iran and the energy shock it has caused, European governments will now be paying top dollar to American energy suppliers if they choose to top up stockpiles that are about to be tapped.
For his part, Trump has allowed America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve to reach its lowest level since 1982. It now stores fewer than 284 million barrels of oil, around two weeks’ supply, and Trump has been faulted for failing to top it up after he returned to power in January 2025, when the oil price was relatively low.
While diesel prices soared to record levels in the UK this week, topping £2 a litre on Friday for the first time ever, in the United States they have declined after Republican states like Georgia opted to suspend fuel taxes last Monday for a 30-day period. That is a further reflection of lawmakers’ fears regarding the impact of energy prices on their own political fortunes as early voting gets underway in the midterm race.
For Trump, satisfaction can be found in grandstanding on the world stage and proving that he still has the muscle to force his allies to accept his demands, even if that disappoints Republican candidates. Late on Friday, he told reporters the proposed diesel export embargo was “never really on the table”.
Putting pressure on G7 leaders may become an even more regular occurrence next year. If Democrats sweep the board in November and take control of both houses of Congress, Trump, like past presidents, may find his only free hand lies in foreign policy. His allies would be prudent to anticipate many similar interventions in the two years ahead.
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