The Great Fuel Crisis Is Here! The Food Crisis Is on its Way

Today is the day when we should have seen whether TACO Trump would do as he threatened to do and stop all trade with all nations that have trade deficits with America if the Fed did not lower interest rates. The Fed did the opposite, and Trump, so far, has said nothing that I have seen, except this:

If it’s such a “great economy,” why does it need to be “brought back” with a Fed rescue?

Then he issued his repeat demand:

LOWER THE INTEREST RATES FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND FAST.

Too late for now. The Fed meeting is over. So, then Trump said,

“I talked to Kevin, and I said, you might as well vote with the Board because it is not going to matter. The board is HOSTILE and POLTICAL.”

So, was Trump just blabbergassing every which way as usual when he threatened to end all trade with trade-deficit nations (it would appear so), or is the big wrecking ball still planning to wipe out America in one fell swoop of a presidential decree, terminating all trade with most of America’s largest trading partners?

May the courts rush in and spare us immediately if he does because if they wait a month to take action, your store shelves will be getting bare. (Most likely he just TACOed again, as usual, because that is what he does—speaks loudly and carries a small stick. Except SOMETIMES he uses missiles and bombs and giant tariffs, so who knows what President Mercury will do when he heats up tomorrow?)

The fuel crisis is here and hot

Get ready for those fuel pumps that do like Mexico did with the peso for years where they hand write “x10”) after the posted price because they cannot handle double digit prices (or they drop the final 9/10ths nonsense and move the decimal point over. (Only in Mexico, it was more like “x100,000.”)

But, hey we are “in control of the Strait of Hormuz” so all is well. However, the heads of fuel companies, as I reported yesterday, have a different story to tell. Theirs is “no respite in sight.”

Oil prices have settled a little … because that makes sense! (Still above the $100 handle, though.) Lunatic markets. As usual, they believe anything the Trump administration says, and this time they came out with a winning solution that tells you in a backhanded way they know this fuel crisis is going to hang around for awhile and get worse:

Energy Secretary Chris Wright says Americans should cut back on driving to see lower gas prices, calling on consumers to reduce fuel demand.

That is called “demand destruction,” and it runs hand-in-hand with deep recessions, whether it is caused by a severe recession or the cause of a severe recession. It works both ways. In fact, presidents who see a recession coming have sometimes urged Americans to keep buying in order to ward the recession off.

So, yeah, the Trump gang has a solution for the problem their war created: If you guys would all go to work less often and take the kids out of sports so they don’t have be driven all over the place, that would go a long way to getting gasoline prices down. You can also kill two birds with one stone by eating less, which will mean fewer trips to the store or the restaurant.

Of course, the biggest problem right now is with diesel prices, which have blown past all historic records; therefore, if you truckers would also drive less, that would help bring down the price of diesel: stop delivering food as often, and tanker drivers stop transporting fuel as often. We cold solve this by just living without and plunging our nation into a recession! Thank you for your attention to this matter. And, if you want to get those food prices down, then stop eating!

Remember how Trump partially shut the economy down to help save us from Covid under Dr. Fauci’s ill advise? Well, once again, his team’s answer to our troubles is that we are supposed to partially shut the economy down … again. That is the only way you drive less. Maybe what they need is to impose another good plague like the last one to give them the excuse to keep us from going to church or eating out, socializing, etc.—all those useless engagements that we, “the eaters,” are known for. Population reduction could also solve the problem by providing the necessary demand destruction. Better call Bill Gates. I hear that is his specialty.

At this rate, a large segment of the American population will be under a self-imposed lockdown within another month or two. Gasoline will be so expensive they simply won’t be able to leave home, or at least not go very far from home, to the grocery store and other “essential” stops, that’s it. Sound familiar? Yeah, the last time we were under those draconian rules was also under a Trump presidency in 2020-2022. “Two weeks to slow the spread” turned into nearly two years. (Leo’s Newsletter)

That is their solution now that they know they’ve lost the war. Turn down the thermostat. Go on a diet. Don’t do anything that requires driving somewhere! And, like Jimmy Carter said during the last energy crisis, wear that cardigan sweater around the house.

Here is how the fuel crisis will hit you in face

You see, the biggest drive in the cost of diesel (and gas) right now is not the cost of crude oil; it is actually the cost of diesel necessary to move crude oil to refineries on trains and then the cost of diesel to truck the refined diesel to stations:

What is driving up gas prices right now isn’t just the price of oil, said Jeff Lenard, vice president of media and strategic communications at the National Association of Convenience Stores. It’s the price of diesel. The cost to get the gas to the gas station is the driving factor behind the steady increase at the pump….

It turns out the high price of diesel even factors into the high price of diesel! There is a built-in feedback loop because that higher diesel costs for the truck driver hauling diesel to the station makes the next diesel purchased by the truck driver for his own truck from that station more expensive, which makes the next diesel purchased more expensive, etc.

Big trucking companies are not immune from the pain. Trucking giant J.B. Hunt CFO Brad Delco said the company has seen “some of the most radical and abnormal swings” in fuel prices that it has ever seen and record-high diesel prices, which are causing at least a $10 million headwind. The company warned of lower earnings to come because of the diesel headwinds.

And this compounding of costs is coming on VERY QUICKLY: Gulf Oil’s Chief Energy Advisor Tom Kloza says,

The next 24 hours will see staggering increases at the pump for both gasoline and diesel. Fuel margins have yet to catch up with previous wholesale hikes. Watch for huge increases in Great Lakes and Rocky Mountain states in particular.”

Fuel prices have not moved in keeping with reality, he is saying, but reality is coming home to rest right away because we hit that point I was warning about where the buffers ran out: Tank bottoms have been reached. The SPR is drained to a level where the more they take it down from here, the more they damage the salt caverns.

Diesel is the price nobody watches until it’s already inside everything else. “It moves through freight rates, farm equipment, food delivery, and home heating, anything that touches a truck at some point in its journey….”

“Consumers feel it last but not least,” Glik said. “It shows up in grocery prices, delivery fees, and anything seasonal that depends on trucking to move fast, usually a few weeks after the spike, once surcharges work their way through the supply chain. That’s different from gas, where drivers see the pain immediately at the pump,” Glik added….

“Travelers face higher costs for holiday airfares because jet fuel is similar to diesel,” Russell said.

“Higher diesel prices will spread across the economy, with consumers facing higher costs for ordinary goods delivered by trucks and services like home improvement,” he added, noting the last PPI report showed pressure in a broad array of items from packaging to circuit boards.

“The list of impacted goods and services will only grow the longer diesel stays high,” Russell said….

Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, said that home heating oil customers can expect to pay as much as 31% more this winter if prices stay at current levels….

Whew!

But he said that is not the whole story. “Families are going to get hit three ways: heating oil, and then everyone will get hit with high gas prices, and delivery on everything is dependent on diesel, so regular, everyday families will really struggle,” Wolfe said.

We might be glad for that super el-niño. It may help keep those home heating costs down some, though we don’t know what kinds of other troubles it may create, such as flooding or more drought next year due to less snowpack.

Construction, public transit, and food distribution are all poised to be clobbered by higher prices. Construction is especially exposed because the machinery that consumes[?] heavy commodities like cement and gravel is all diesel driven. “They could also get squeezed as they need to complete work at contracted prices….”

Oh, and those actual fuel shortages I’ve been warning you about? They are now showing up, which will drive prices even more:

Costco recently made the decision to limit how much gas its members can buy.

That is the gas rationing of the seventies coming back into fashion along with the cardigan sweaters. That is just like Costco’s decision I wrote about earlier this week to limit how much engine oil customers can buy. It starts as rationing to try to keep from running out, and then, when things continue on a month or two longer, it ends with signs saying “Out of stock.”

In fact,

Some gas stations in North Texas and parts of Florida and California are reporting they have run out of diesel fuel. You can’t get it at any price.

The great fuel crisis of 2026 has officially arrived.

It’s still spotty—still looking like it is sneaking in around the back way to where you wonder if this might just be a handful of gas stations forgetting to order fuel on time, but it is looking more and more like the real deal with every passing day. Soon it will be the full-on real deal.

Trump turned spring into April Fuels Day for farmers

Having said he loves our farmers and having promised he would be good for farmers, diesel is over $200 per barrel now. That’s reality. I remember when, not long back, I paid $100 to fill a blue barrel with Ag. diesel and that was retail price (of course, as Ag. diesel it was tax-free because tractors don’t use roads … not enough to matter anyway.) That was back when we had our 40-acre farm, pre our retirement moves. I don’t know what Ag. diesel is selling for in our area right now, but I know it’s hurting farmers—bigly, to use Donald Trump’s vernacular.

One farmer reports in recent stories that it costs him $1,000 to fill his combine with diesel. I mentioned before that I heard of a local farmer in my town saying it cost him $1,500 to fill his large eight-wheel tractor; and that amount of fuel, when tilling large fields, just gets him through the day because turning over and chopping up dirt as you roll along at ten miles per hour doing a forty-foot swath is even heavier work than running a combine to cut and thresh grain! And that was the anecdotal story I reported from the local bar a few months ago during the last burst in fuel prices. Today’s fuel prices are higher even though crude oil is lower than it was during that peak! That is particularly due to refineries being knocked out by two wars.

Let me remind people that, while farmers are a humble lot, they ARE the backbone of America if you are one of those who needs to eat. So, you might spend a little time cherishing those who put food on your table, especially now that it is also going to cost a lot more to ship food in from out of the country due to diesel prices but especially due to tariffs.

That was why Trump cut his tariffs on Brazilian and Argentine beef to try to get beef prices back down. Huge tariffs hugely raise your prices. Trump and his team were always lying when they claimed tariffs did not cause inflation. Tariffs cause so much inflation that Trump is hoping to make a big dent in beef price just by removing beef tariffs from two nations.

Some of those who operate ships are saying they have stopped their ships because they cannot afford or get bunker fuel (the cheapest of all fuels because it is such thick sludge from the leftover end of the cracking system that it has to be moved with an augur inside the ship’s hold then heated to thin it down in order to inject it into the ship’s engines).

So, there is not a good foreign backup for American food production when US farmers are hurting because farmers in other nations are hurting worse, and shipping has gone out of control for costs and availability, and THEN you pile Trump Tariffs on top of all of that!

So, yes he IS a wrecking ball for the whole world.

And their fertilizer prices? You already know, but that’s getting worse, too, because Saudi Arabia, like Ukraine, exported HUGE amounts of fertilizer made inside of Saudi Arabia from fossil fuels. And it is largely cut off now. Only the Suez Canal remains functioning for Saudi shipments.

Both nitrogen, derived from natural gas, and sulfur derived from sour crude (a high 5% sulfur content is what makes it “sour”) are in shorter supply. These are MAJOR ingredients of fertilizers that come from fossil fuels.

“Let’s just talk numbers for one second,” Pratt says. “Typically, the global phosphate fertilizer market every year is 75 million tons. That’s how much phosphate fertilizer global farmers consume every year. Our best estimates are that producers around the world will probably make about 45 million tons this year, because they either can’t get or can’t afford sulfur.

“There is a looming crisis out there, and it’s not too far removed, it becomes a food crisis.”

“They could be looking at higher fertilizer prices, or they could be not able to find it at all,” Pratt says. “If we’re not able to produce phosphate fertilizers here, and our big competitors in other parts of the world are either slowed down or not producing, that’s a pretty dire situation.”

We don’t produce as much sulfur here because our crude is sweet, giving less diesel and less sulfur.

Blough said farmers will be clocked by the high prices because of the high use of diesel to transport fertilizers and crops and operate tractors and combines. “Those costs can be hard to pass on,” Blough said. That has already become a big midterm elections headwind for Republicans in farm states.

Markets play dumb, so do officials

But, hey, stocks are up and the 10YR bond is back below 5% (whew!) because the Fed is back in control with its useless 0.25% rate hike (useless because rate hikes are not going to effectively curb prices caused by SEVERE SHORTAGES). Of course, the Fed has to look like it is doing something. It has to keep up with what the bond vigilantes have been doing so that it doesn’t start to look like the vigilantes are the only law enforcement left in town. Seeing the Fed back in action has brought a very “transitory” sigh of relief in markets.

I guarantee you: markets will catch a meaningless breath and then go back to turmoil in a day or two because the reality of Trumpian chaos keeps coming like a train wreck right now, thanks to the human wrecking ball, knocking the train off its tracks.

One source says that Saudi Arabia has said it could get that east-west pipeline back up to half capacity in a few days. Again that informationwas reported by Energy Sec’y Chris Wright. Don’t believe a word of it. Lies are their native language.

Nevertheless, that is a big part of what settled oil prices on the openly lunatic market that trades headlines without the benefit of actual brainwork because it is not trained to sift out truth. Don’t believe it because that schedule 1) seems extremely unlikely for repair of such damage; however, they may be talking patches and shunts that bypass destroyed pumping stations to run the line with fewer pumps. That would explain why it would be running at half capacity because there is much less pressure to keep the oil moving; BUT 2) the Houthis or the Iraqis will just blow it up again as soon as the oil starts flowing anyway … unless they are stupid, which I don’t take them to be. They have already shown how easily they can do it, so oil speculators are nuts to be trading the headlines, but that is how AI-driven algorithms and the usual market greed and hyperventilating work.

It is not hard to do it all again in just a day’s work, and its a waste of time to do more until its back up and running, so you can make a big mess all over again. Such long, visible structures as major pipelines are almost impossible to defend without superb anti-air defenses, and those are now much weaker due to the weapon depletion that Team Trump keeps denying but that reality on the ground keeps showing itself to be the case … like those photos of destroyed US ME military bases I showed earlier this week.

Lies are their native language because lies are the native language of their father Trump and of the one who would appear to be his spiritual father—the father of lies.

Remember: The greedy market always reacts to “good” news, even if false. It hears what it most wants to hear! It reads the headlines for every breath of hope, which makes it easy for Trump to jawbone the market up (and make a killing every time).

Remember, also, the Houthis have, over the weekend, been armed by the fleeing Saudis with a lot of America’s best-built equipment that the Saudi forces left behind like Biden did in Afghanistan. (Likely not equipment given by the US, but purchased by the filthy rich Saudi government from US manufacturers under US government approval.)

The worst part: NONE OF THIS CAN BE CHANGED. It is already a done deal. It is solidly baked into the desert sand! And, therefore, into the American loam!

“Some believe, incorrectly, that once the kinetic fighting stops that diesel prices will fall, but that’s not the case due to net refining capacity,” Buffington said, adding it could take a year or longer for prices to return to the $4 level.

Indeed, as reported in The Deeper Dive, everything changed over the past weekend. (See “The Trump-Israel-Iran War takes an Atom-Bomb Sized Turn!”)

I don’t want people to live by fear. Live by faith, but be wise. Be prudent, and be happy. Find the path to doing that because this is for the long haul now!

“Trump says the United States is winning the war in Iran and we are in control the Strait of Hormuz. Based on 10-dollar diesel fuel we are losing the war,” John Boyd, founder and president of the National Black Farmers Association, told Newsweek.