Trump asks Xi for more fuel, gets a Chinese export ban, then threatens Europe with his own

…(cont) On September 23rd, before the ban was even signed, Common Dreams carried the warning that a 90-day diesel export ban meant to blunt Iran-war price hikes could drive the same US economy further into the ground — pulling the country's own surplus diesel off world markets to relieve a shortage the war had created in the first place.

By October 1st the invoice had four lines on it. China stopped exporting its own fuel, a week after the president personally asked President Xi to send more — a government protecting its own pump prices while supplying none of the relief it had been asked for. The administration pressed Germany and France to release diesel from the emergency reserves both countries keep for their own future shortages, an export ban held out as the alternative if they decline. And the New York Times quoted the ban itself, not the war behind it, as a "tremendous shock and blow" to the economies being asked to absorb it.

Run the ledger. Washington started the war in February. The Times credits the record diesel price first to domestic refinery shutdowns; three weeks earlier the president had blamed Ukraine's strikes instead. Germany and France are being asked to spend down stockpiles built for their own emergencies to cover a price spike that began in a different country's war. China, asked directly for more fuel, delivered less. Every party actually billed this month — Iran's auto and rail workers, Europe's reserve tanks, the diesel buyer at the pump — sits somewhere other than the Treasury building that keeps naming the campaign. The gap between who started this and who is paying for it has a dollar sign and a due date, hon, and so far nobody at the top of that invoice has signed it.