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President Donald Trump recently announced he’d reached an unexpected agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin to import diesel from Russia, which runs counter to long-standing sanctions aimed at stopping Putin’s attacks on Ukraine.
This deal is horrible for many reasons, and Sen. Susan Collins, Sen. Angus King and other senators are right to oppose it. Collins and a bipartisan group of a dozen senators, who sent a letter to the president on Tuesday raising their objections, are looking into ways to block the president’s move. They must act quickly to ensure it is.
“This deal is a gift to our adversary and a betrayal of our allies; it should be rescinded,” the senators said bluntly in the letter.
Diesel prices have soared to over $6 a gallon in part because of Trump’s war with Iran, which has disrupted fuel shipments through the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump announced Friday that Russia would immediately supply 300,000 tons of diesel, followed by 500,000 tons next month, and another 1 million tons in December.
That sounds like a lot. It is not.
The first shipment of 300,000 tons equals a little over 2 million barrels of diesel. The U.S. uses about 3.6 million barrels of diesel per day. So, the fuel Trump touts from Russia would last less than a day. In terms of global supply, it would last 11 minutes, according to Forbes.
That will do nothing to bring down global prices.
For a virtually meaningless amount of diesel, Trump is allowing Russia to raise money and to be treated like a reasonable global partner. This is counterproductive to U.S. and global interests.
Worse, Trump attacked Ukraine and its leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump ludicrously said that Zelenskyy could end Russia’s attacks against Ukraine. To be clear, Russia is the one doing the attacking, and it must be the one to stop its war of aggression.
Trump even suggested that Zelenskyy, who has bravely led Ukraine against relentless Russian attacks, should be replaced.
Trump’s surprise announcement came just a few weeks after Congress passed legislation that sought to stop the flow of money from fuel sales that Russia is using to finance its war against Ukraine. It directed Trump to impose substantial tariffs on the top importers of Russian oil or natural gas. Trump did the opposite.
Collins, who was a co-sponsor of the sanctions law along with King, was among a bipartisan group of six senators who called on Trump to immediately reverse course.
“Congress explicitly banned Russian energy imports in 2022 to prevent American dollars from financing Putin’s brutal war against Ukraine. Congress was clear: the U.S. should not import oil from Russia until it ends its aggression against Ukraine and ceases threats against our NATO Allies,” the group said in a press release.
“President Trump’s decision to allow Russian diesel imports to the U.S. runs directly counter to that law,” the senators added. “The United States should not provide Putin with a financial lifeline while Russia continues to kill Ukrainian civilians. The administration must immediately reverse course.”
A larger group signed on to the Oct. 13 letter to the president.
King, who is not part of the group, also had strong objections to the deal, calling it “illegal, immoral and wrong.”
“Instead of pursuing solutions that are consistent with America’s values, President Trump has decided to ease energy sanctions on Russia. In doing so, he chose Putin over the American people, which will ultimately help fuel that autocracy’s bloody, unprovoked war of aggression on Ukraine,” King said in a statement on Saturday.
“At the end of the day, this deal from the White House is an attempt to boost their short-term political prospects at the true cost of the American people,” he added. “This deal comforts our enemies and will do little for Americans. It’s a fraud.”
Americans need relief from high fuel prices, including the cost of heating oil, which has nearly doubled in recent months.
That relief needs to be real, and it can’t come at the expense of allowing Russia to continue to brutalize Ukraine, or any other country.
