Trump screwed it up, so Europe is opening its reserves

Trump has pulled it off: squeezed by the fuel market cracked open by the Iranian war and the looming American midterm elections, he has pressured his partners into tapping their strategic reserves. Emmanuel Macron announced on Friday that G7 countries will release up to one hundred million barrels of diesel and crude oil onto the market over four months, giving priority to diesel. The American president has already published a triumphant announcement that Europe is releasing a huge amount from its accumulated diesel stocks. With a single stroke, the joint measure has thus become Trump's personal victory: he wages war, and we open our strategic reserves before winter.

The American president now desperately fucking needs some kind of result, because the Iranian war and his trade conflicts have left their mark on Americans' wallets too, and rising prices have become a political burden ahead of the November elections. The price of diesel per gallon has climbed to record highs, while Trump's approval ratings are weak; the gas pump's meter is apparently less receptive to MAGA propaganda than rally crowds are. The feeble-minded president can now boast that by freeing up European reserves he has managed to ease a problem that his own policy was solely responsible for creating. Behind the pressure campaign, moreover, lay the threat of restricting American diesel exports. On Thursday, Washington warned Europe that it was in its own interest to cooperate on fuel supply, while dangling the threat of cutting off American shipments. According to an estimate cited from Oxford Economics, this could raise European diesel prices by forty to fifty percent, and in France could push the price per liter well above three euros. When announcing the agreement, Macron specifically emphasized that participants had committed to avoiding export bans, and Trump was clear on this point. A fine moment, when one of the fruits of allied cooperation is having to be grateful that America merely promises not to set our house on fire.

Analyzing why we are this stupid could truly fill a library, but our vulnerability has a very concrete structure. Europe has become increasingly dependent on American diesel following the embargo on Russian oil products and then the Middle East supply disruptions caused by the Iranian war. Trump used this dependence to demand access to Europe's reserves. Releasing the stocks may of course ease the rise in European prices, but that doesn't change the fact that we need to see just how fucking dangerous a position we've gotten into: one of our major suppliers is dictating, through political threats, when we're allowed to touch our own strategic reserves. Meanwhile, Trump has also found a more convenient culprit for rising fuel prices: the Ukrainians, who he claims are too eager in attacking Russian refineries. In September he already called on Zelensky to stop these strikes, and now he has once again blamed attacks on Russian diesel production for the supply problems. In Washington's eyes, one of the Ukrainian army's tools for weakening the aggressor's economic and fuel-supply base has thus turned into an inconvenient market disruption. The invaded country is told to hold back because expensive fuel is inconvenient for the American president — it would be hard to illustrate more clearly where Ukrainian lives rank on Trump's list of political priorities.

And here comes the parallel Russian news: Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak announced on Friday that Moscow could partially lift its restrictions on diesel exports if production exceeds domestic demand. The ban was in fact extended this week until October 31, but the possibility of lifting it has now emerged as well. Novak meanwhile acknowledged that the state of the energy infrastructure remains tense because of Ukrainian drone attacks, although he claimed defensive measures had reduced the damage and sped up repairs. The previous day, Putin had set an entirely different condition: he said Russia would not supply diesel from its domestic market to the world market until sanctions against Moscow were lifted. In other words, the aggressor is also using the fuel shortage as a bargaining chip, while the American president is trying to rein in Ukraine for attacking the aggressor's refineries. There's no need to invent some unproven backroom deal behind the Russian-American talks here, because the public positions alone fit together ugly enough on their own. Europe is releasing reserves, Ukraine is being told to restrain itself, and Moscow is demanding sanctions relief in exchange for diesel. Trump is selling all of this to American voters as his own success, having promised them he would bring everyone to their knees before America. For now, what we see is that he threatens his allies, disciplines the invaded country, and offers the Russians yet another opportunity to reap political benefit from the consequences of the war. In this story, “America First” increasingly means that first everyone else has to pay for Trump's screwed-up policy, so that he can then go home and declare victory.

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