Governors' Biofuels Coalition

A potential US ban on diesel exports might initially appear to be a straightforward way to increase domestic supply and lower prices, but the reality is far more complicated, analysts and industry watchers agree. While the concept of a US diesel export ban has been floated over the past few weeks amid record high prices, President Trump’s Sept. 22 statement that “let’s not send out the diesel” brought it closer to reality.

Trump administration officials are weighing alternatives to imposing a ban on diesel exports to bring prices for the fuel down from record highs — including passing the issue down to the state level, three people familiar with the negotiations said Friday.

Several options are on the table to alleviate the financial burden the high prices have inflicted on the farming and transportation sectors without a full halt to exports of the fuel, which economists and oil industry executives have warned would ultimately disrupt fuel production and push prices higher.

President Donald Trump, who has been hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington for much of the latter half of the week, is still expected to announce some sort of policy as soon as Friday or early next week, though no final decision has been made, these people said.

President Donald Trump announced Saturday that he has approved new fuel economy standards for passenger vehicles, in another move meant to take aim at Biden-era policies supporting electric vehicles.

Trump said in a Truth Social post that he “just approved new Fuel Economy Standards that TERMINATE Sleepy Joe Biden and Pete Boot-EDGE-EDGE’s ridiculous EV Mandate. The Dumocrats cost our Great Auto Manufacturers $Billions, forced Americans into cars they never wanted, and wasted Billions on Chargers that were never built.”

The announcement comes as the White House faces increased scrutiny for high gas prices — hovering just under $4.50 a gallon on average in the U.S. Saturday — rising car prices and a tough midterm election on the horizon.

 Rick Telesz raises soybeans, corn and dairy cows on about 700 acres in western Pennsylvania. He’s expecting a promising soybean crop this fall — but Telesz will be lucky to just break even. “Am I going to make money this year?” he asks. “To be honest, I hope the harvest is good enough that I can pay for all those inputs I had this spring and summer.”

The Trump administration will move on Monday to sharply scale back fuel-efficiency rules for new cars and light trucks, gutting one of the government’s most significant efforts to reduce gasoline consumption and speed the country’s shift to electric vehicles.

President Trump said on Saturday on social media that he had “just approved new Fuel Economy Standards,” adding falsely that President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had implemented an “E.V. mandate.” The transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, said in his own social media post that the move would be announced Monday.

The final rule from the Transportation Department is expected to significantly weaken federal mileage standards, which have prodded automakers to increase the fuel efficiency of gasoline-powered cars and to sell more nonpolluting electric models.

The Trump administration is preparing a plan to ban exports of diesel for 90 days, despite splits inside the administration and with the oil industry, in a bid to bring down energy prices weighing on Republicans leading into the midterms, five people familiar with the discussions said Wednesday.

A ban, the legal process of which is still being worked out, has been opposed by U.S. fuel producers who have warned that any short-term benefit would be outweighed by higher fuel prices in the future. Any halt to shipments would be the first restriction on U.S. energy exports since the Obama administration lifted a decades-old ban on oil exports in 2015.

The marriage between Hill Republicans and the fossil fuel industry is showing signs of fracture, as a potential diesel export ban puts strain on a long-standing alliance.

Farm-state Republicans and MAGA populists are decrying the greed of “Big Oil” and lining up behind diesel export bans amid skyrocketing prices that the fossil fuel industry argues would make a “difficult situation worse.”

The Corn Belt has abundant agricultural feedstocks and the technology is there to turn more crops and crop residue into chemicals, plastics and other products, but a potential explosion in the rural bioeconomy is hampered by a shortage of capital and manufacturing infrastructure.

Agribusinesses, investors and economic-development groups at the Bio Innovations North America conference in Omaha focused heavily on a central challenge: taking new biobased technologies from the laboratory to commercial manufacturing.

Even before the Iran war, some governments were increasing their biofuel targets. Several countries have agreed to buy American biofuels as part of trade deals. That includes Vietnam, which imported eight times more U.S. ethanol in the first half of this year than in all of 2025, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department, which last week touted a new plan to boost exports. 

But the Iran energy shock spurred countries from Brazil to India to step up plans to blend biofuels into gasoline and diesel. If all the targets are realized, meeting the demand would require devoting an extra 139,000 square miles to biofuel, according to researchers at Chatham House, a U.K. think tank. That’s roughly the area of Montana. 

Now Canadians of all political stripes are rallying around their government, led by Prime Minister Mark Carney, while in the United States, even some self-identified MAGA voters are worried about the political fallout for Trump.

According to the latest POLITICO Poll, just a quarter of American respondents said Trump was right to impose new tariffs on Canada last month, while nearly three quarters of Canadians backed Carney’s decision to retaliate with matching Canadian duties on Sept. 8.