For a man who used to own and operate a casino chain, Donald Trump has very little in the way of a poker face – that might, of course, help to explain why three of his casinos went bankrupt.
The US President is staring a major defeat in the midterms dead in the face, and with the vote just weeks away, is clearly looking for something that might turn things in his party’s direction.
The final years of Trump’s time in power – and whether he will be able to do anything with them – are at stake, and the President is all too aware that he’s losing: his personal popularity is low, inflation is high and US mortgage rates are the highest they’ve been in years.
Trump is, then, casting around for a rabbit he can pull out of his hat, and he thinks he’s found one: if he can reduce the cost of diesel, even if only for a few weeks, he can tell US voters he’s solved a crisis, helped them out and that they should stick with his agenda.
Voters already have Trump to thank for diesel prices, because it’s his war with Iran that has caused them to spike in the first place: not only has it pushed up the price of oil, from which diesel is derived, but it has forced much of the world’s diesel-refining capacity offline, meaning the shortage is even more acute than the shortage of oil.
Of course, the best way to reduce diesel prices would be to agree a peace deal with Iran that allows normal trade across the Middle East to resume, but Trump appears to have given up on that. Instead, in his desperation, he’s going for another tried-and-tested Trump tactic: screwing over his friends.
The shortages caused by Trump’s war are being felt across the globe, and they have hit Europe – which gets more of its oil and gas from the Middle East than the US does – hardest. Having got through the summer, the UK and EU are now both facing the prospect of keeping the lights on, boilers running and diesel flowing throughout the winter months.
Prices of petrol and diesel have risen sharply in the UK due to the US war with Iran, and could be set to rise higher (Photo: Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty)That means Europe, which contains many of the US’ closest allies, is having to manage a major political and economic crisis of Trump’s own making. Now, the President is very deliberately making it much worse.
He is demanding that European nations release their strategic reserves of diesel, to help reduce the world price for the vital fuel – used for public transport, freight logistics, agriculture and much more. If they don’t, he has threatened to cut off all US diesel exports, making existing shortages even worse.
This threat is an absolute no-win situation for US allies across the world. If they do what Trump wants, they deplete their stockpiles now, just to reduce prices, and risk having them run dry during the height of winter.
But if they say no and he follows through, that will make the shortages even worse. Trump is threatening major economic damage and political unrest on the UK and Europe, purely in the hope of some short-term political advantage to himself back home.
That is hardly an isolated incident in Trump’s second term. Bullying, cajoling and otherwise screwing over long-term allies and trading partners is perhaps the defining characteristic of Trump 2.0. He has undermined Nato, threatened to invade Greenland and launched a trade war against most of the world (especially Canada).
In the last week, people in the UK have seen the potential impact of Trump’s policies first-hand. On Sunday, five men were arrested near RAF Fairford, a base used by the US Air Force. Laurence Taylor, head of the UK’s Counter Terrorism Policing, said officers were considering all angles, including that “this may be activity committed by proxies, or individuals either knowingly or unknowingly, working on behalf of a foreign state”.
Armed police officers on a road outside the perimeter of the RAF Fairford airbase, after several men were arrested on suspicion of offences under the Explosives Act (Photo: Toby Shepheard/Reuters)Andy Burnham has said that “there are strong indications that Iran played a part in what happened”.
Tehran has strongly denied any involvement, but the incident served as a fresh reminder of the ways that Trump’s ongoing war could be spilling out.
The President’s threat to ban diesel exports to Europe unless we do what he wants came a few days after.
Trump’s allies might argue that brutal though it is, this is what “America First” means. His job is to worry about US diesel prices, not the rest of the world’s. That certainly seems to be Trump’s logic. The trouble for him is that a fuel crisis across Europe would not prove to be good for either prices or for the stock market, both of which he cares about a great deal.
Even his threat to ban diesel exports could itself spook markets into believing that the situation is worse than feared, meaning US prices for consumers wouldn’t fall. In short, a desperate and chaotic Trump is, once again, harming his allies and the world for a plan that is almost certain not to work.
That’s cold comfort for the UK, though. We have spent months getting battered by US tariffs and rows over security. Now, in the space of a week, Trump has arguably complicated our national security and threatened our energy supply.
With friends like this, who needs enemies.
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