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# Thune's Diesel Idea Is Backward. Here's the Fix That Actually Works.
- URL: https://thecrimsonhub.com/thunes-diesel-idea-is-backward-heres-the-fix-that-actually-works/
- Published: 2026-09-21T11:00:30.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-21T11:00:29.000Z
- Author: Crimson Staff
- Tags: gas prices

Senator John Thune floated something [remarkable this week](https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/senate/4727597/john-thune-diesel-export-ban-record-high-prices/?ref=thecrimsonhub.com): he's open to banning diesel exports to fight [record-high prices](https://www.politico.com/news/2026/09/03/diesel-prices-hit-all-time-high-as-trump-administration-brandishes-energy-policies-01063862?ref=thecrimsonhub.com) at the pump. It's the kind of idea that sounds decisive in a press release and falls apart the moment you think about it. Export bans spook markets, invite retaliation, and hand adversaries a gift on energy dominance. With Iran looking the way it does right now, flinching is the last thing the GOP needs on the record heading into the midterms.

This is a midterm problem for sure. [The Atlantic](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/09/trump-midterms-gas-prices/688616/?ref=thecrimsonhub.com) isn't wrong that gas and diesel prices could cost Republicans the House and Senate, and diesel is the one that bites hardest. Diesel moves the freight, and freight moves the food. [RSM's analysis](https://rsmus.com/insights/economics/diesel-trucking-food-prices-and-inflation.html?ref=thecrimsonhub.com) shows trucking costs feed straight into grocery prices, since nearly everything on the shelf arrived by truck. Farmers get squeezed twice. [Farm equipment runs on diesel too](https://enginetechforum.org/agriculture?ref=thecrimsonhub.com), so the same spike raising shipping costs also raises the cost of planting and harvesting. They eat it until they can't, then pass it along, and everyone else eats it at checkout.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/cf/ac/cfac1fd0-23e3-490f-a17a-a11b795ef5b5/content/images/2026/09/diesel.webp)

So diesel prices are a real, politically dangerous problem. But an export ban is the wrong tool. There's a better one sitting in plain sight, and it doesn't cost America a shred of energy leverage abroad.

**Kill the ethanol mandate, or at least suspend it.**

The Renewable Fuel Standard forces refiners to blend ever-increasing volumes of ethanol into the fuel supply, and it's quietly become one of the more expensive hidden taxes in American life. [EPRINC's modeling](https://eprinc.org/updated-chart-of-the-week-the-renewable-fuel-standards-cost-to-consumers/?ref=thecrimsonhub.com) shows suspending the high blending obligations could cut costs by up to 44 cents a gallon. That's real relief, delivered fast, with no ships turned away at port.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/cf/ac/cfac1fd0-23e3-490f-a17a-a11b795ef5b5/content/images/2026/09/Gemini_Generated_Image_8pb93z8pb93z8pb9.jpeg)

Here's what the RFS actually costs, and it should make every farm-state Republican uncomfortable:

- The mandate runs about $183.62 per person a year, or roughly $734 for a family of four.
- It hits red and rural America hardest. Thirteen of the fifteen highest per-capita RFS-cost states are Republican-held or leaning, even as cost of living topped 2024 exit polls. A family of four in Alabama is out an estimated $1,092 a year.
- The per-capita number undersells rural pain. [Rural drivers log roughly 30% more miles annually than urban drivers](https://www.newsweek.com/farmers-slam-trump-record-diesel-prices-cant-survive-12448846?ref=thecrimsonhub.com), so farmers absorb even more of this than averages suggest.
- The battleground math is brutal: an estimated $828 a year for a family of four in Texas, $805 in Georgia, $898 in Maine, $840 in Iowa, $710 in Ohio, $603 in California, $781 in Wisconsin, $789 in North Carolina, and $774 in Kansas. Texas alone is out $6.56 billion statewide. Texas, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Iowa are major farm states, so it's farmers taking the hit twice, and outside Iowa none of these states even lean heavily on corn.
- It's a tax nobody sees. The federal gas tax is 18.4 cents a gallon, diesel's is 24.4 cents, both printed on the receipt. The RFS compliance cost runs roughly double the gas tax, but it [never shows up on a receipt](https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/biofuel/the-renewable-fuel-standards-cost-to-american-motorists/?ref=thecrimsonhub.com) because refiners bury it in the supply chain. Even Iowa isn't spared, eating $681 million a year in compliance costs, or $210 per person, propping up a program supposedly helping it.

The House Freedom Caucus has already tried to suspend this tax. It went nowhere. Had it succeeded, farmers and truckers could be looking at a 60-cent reduction right now, no export ban required.

Thune wants to fix diesel prices. Fine. There's a lever sitting right in front of him, one that doesn't spook markets, doesn't cede ground to adversaries, and doesn't put the federal government in charge of who buys American fuel. It just requires admitting the ethanol mandate was never the pro-farmer policy it was sold as, and that farmers are the ones paying for that fiction twice.