WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump announced Friday that he has struck a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to flood world markets with Russian diesel, a move the President described as “very simple, very smart,” and which the rest of the world described as a great many other things, nearly all of them four syllables or longer.
The mechanics are elegant. Shortly after the announcement, the U.S. Treasury formally issued a temporary license letting Russian diesel into the market, which is the part of the deal where the government does something. The President’s part was the phone call.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the arrangement “a weak decision of strong partners”, and while that sentence contains three nouns and one adjective, it does not contain a plan. The President’s plan is diesel. You can hold a press conference about diesel. You can put diesel on a pump. You cannot put principles on a pump, which is why principles have never once lowered a price.
Critics called the deal a stunning reversal of years of pressure on Moscow. That is one word for it. The other word is leverage. For four years, the question in Washington was how to make Russia feel the pain of the American fuel pump. On Friday, the President skipped the pain and went straight to the pump. You cannot embargo a country you have agreed to buy from. That is not surrender. That is procurement.
“I think people misunderstand sanctions,” said Deb Kessler, a precinct chair in Toledo who has knocked on 11,000 doors and never once knocked on Moscow’s. “A sanction is just a price you haven’t agreed to yet. The President agreed to a better price. My guys at the co-op noticed the difference in about a day, and their trucks don’t read foreign policy.”
Analysts, for their part, said the deal highlights mounting pressure to curb fuel prices while doing little to actually move them, which is what analysts said about the European stockpile release, and about the export threat that preceded it, and about the last three fuel crises in which the President simply mentioned a thing and the thing happened. The analysts have a perfect record of being right about everything except the scoreboard.
SANCTIONS-TO-SUPPLY-CHAIN: A SKILLS TRANSFER
- Leverage: Four years of pressure, converted in one call into a delivery window.
- Timing: Announced Friday, ahead of the weekend, ahead of the midterms, ahead of the pump.
- Staffing: Zero new agencies. The instrument of policy remains the microphone.
- Precedent: The President previously threatened to stop selling diesel to Europe, and the world released 100 million barrels to avoid finding out. The threat worked. This is the threat's victory lap.
- Risk: None identified. The diesel cannot vote.
The NATO allies expressed concern, which allies do on schedule, and the President said he would “not forget” the snubs of the past week, which is the sentence a man uses when the ledger is open and the handwriting is his.
At press time, the Treasury was reportedly weighing a second temporary license, this one for Russian vodka, purely to close the circle, and purely because the President, as has been well-documented, likes a deal to finish what it starts.