Trump lifts sanctions on Russian diesel | Hacker News Reader

Trump lifts sanctions on Russian diesel

politico.com

29 pointsceejayoz15 comments

He is also allowing the wide spread use of red-dye diesel, which is tax free and typically restricted to non-road use vehicles and machinery.

So dumb. The red dye is added by law to catch people from using it without paying taxes. They could just... cut the tax on diesel?

The reality is it's bad idea that is going to put you into trouble if you tried it in most states as it's not like the federal government can cancel out the state's taxes and enforcement through executive order.

As Trump said at his rally, he didn't actually know what red dye diesel is anyway.

And the aftereffects last for months. Gas stations can't simply switch their red dyed diesel tanks for regular diesel tanks because then everybody tanking from that reservoir will potentially end up fined. The detection gear is so sensitive that if you used red dyed diesel once and then half a year of regular you could still prove it.

He is clearly a russian agent. Siding with the aggressor country.

Is that your take? What about desperation to lower domestic diesel prices in order to salvage the midterms?

Why not both?

Sanctions relief apropos of nothing goes beyond desperation, if these were Iranian sanctions then it would be decried as treason.

Already did it, a few months back.

https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2026/06/treasury-...

What about the oil from Venezuela?

Why is a deal with Russia necessary?

Venezuelan oil infrastructure is very much degraded after years of disrepair. Today, Venezuela produces a fraction of oil that it did during its peak and unleashing Russian oil onto the world market will have immediate impact on global diesel prices.

Venezuela‘s crude oil output is 1.2 to 1.25 million barrels per day. You are telling me they or the US have no way to turn some of it to diesel?

What they're producing is already used. We're lacking at least 10-15m per day now. Also don't have enough boats now that they need to go around Africa. Russias refineries are also under drone attacks and they even have internal shortages on fuel.

It's a triple whammy that is about to hit hard as china started buying oil again but decreased diesel exports.

> Venezuelan oil infrastructure is very much degraded

Russia is in the middle of a war. It's oil infrastructure is famously under attack by a very successful Ukrainian campaign. Russian oil infrastructure it degraded as hell.

This is not even a large enough volume of oil to have much affect on US demand so why is Trump doing a deal with the enemy?

All he's doing is hurting US foreign interests. This has Polymarket scam written all over it.

What's the point of this? If Trump wanted to keep gas and diesel prices down, he should have done this months ago. It's not going to have any effect on prices or attitudes by November 3. This isn't going to have an effect on midterms as an upside.

It does make Trump look weak, doing something, anything, to keep Republican Majority in Congress, and having no foreign policy principles. It also confirms something we've known since Trump's first impeachment, that he runs foreign policy for his own benefit/enrichment.

I don't see how this can be defended.

Not that Trump loses in November. Trump has still 2 more years of causing mayhem.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com