1. United States
2. Ohio
3. Letter

For seven months, we’ve been warned a fuel crisis was coming if the Iran war dragged on. This week, the people who run the oil industry told the Wall Street Journal it has arrived. The numbers back up that report. Oil is 109 dollars a barrel, up 20 percent in a month and 60 percent from a year ago. Gas is up 45 percent since the war started. But the most pressing concern is diesel, which recently passed 6 dollars a gallon for the first time ever. And there’s no substitute. Every truck, train, and tractor runs on diesel. When its price goes up, everything delivered through the supply chain goes up with it. Businesses are already passing that burden along as higher prices on your groceries and fees on your packages. And it’s hurting the entire economy. On Monday, the 10-year Treasury yield went above five percent for the first time since 2023 because markets expect fuel prices to feed inflation. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates tomorrow, the first hike in three years. Affordability is only getting worse. And while MAGA loyalists will continue to blame Biden, this happened under only one man: President Trump. So what is he doing about it? Not much of anything, given the White House seems to have run out of ideas. Politico talked to a former Trump economic adviser who said “there’s not much they can do about it.” Another former adviser added, “they’re still looking for magic bullets.” Trump’s magic bullet? Blame Ukraine. Yesterday, he told Zelensky to stop hitting Russian oil refineries because those strikes are “hurting the world.” But Putin’s strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure? Not a word. While Trump is protecting the Russian economy, Thomas Massie weighed in on the president’s assessment of his own economy. Is it the Golden Age if we need gold to buy diesel? The only person who might soon be able to afford it is the man sitting in his gold-plated Oval Office. And he certainly isn’t doing anything to make our lives more affordable.