Been saying this for years. Our shipyards have way more capacity than the Beltway bandits want you to know.

If you spend your life on X, you’d think Americans are deeply concerned about the war with Iran. As I’ve been saying for months, and as countless sources have confirmed, the vast majority aren’t. And I suspect even fewer give a damn where their diesel comes from Russia or Canada or Timbuktu. That’s what stripping our manufacturing and refining capabilities for decades has produced: apathy when you cry about sourcing. But there’s a deeper problem with this post… Between Ukraine’s devastatingly successful strikes on Russian refineries, the acute global shortage of available oil tankers to move diesel long distances and the abundance of potential buyers closer to Russia than the United States, I suspect very little Russian diesel will actually reach American shores. Then there’s the logistics. A VLCC supertanker carries roughly 2 million barrels of diesel. A highway tanker truck carries about 200. Do the math. You’d need 10,000 truckloads to replace the cargo of ONE supertanker. Not. Gonna. Happen. And even if you could somehow find tens of thousands of trucks, moving crude oil by road is vastly less fuel-efficient than moving it by sea. Trucks burn more than 10 times more diesel per ton mile than supertankers do. You’d burn considerably more diesel getting the cargo to market, eating into whatever diesel output at the docks in Russia you hoped to gain. But here’s what I really don’t understand. Why is it so difficult for people to recognize that Putin has repeatedly prioritized saving face over delivering tangible victories for the Russian people? If handing Putin a minor, fleeting PR victory helps end the war… or even gives Ukraine a meaningful strategic advantage… that’s a win. And for those who haven’t read The Art of the Deal, perhaps you should. Trump has spent decades trading symbolic concessions for tangible gains. Let the other guy claim victory in the headlines while you walk away with something that actually matters. The man has been president for roughly six years. Why do you people keep falling for the same routine? If Putin wants to move massive logistical mountains to move diesel at an outrageous cost from Iran all the way to the United States and sell it to us at a discount to his cost just to save face… why wouldn’t you let him? Actually, never mind. The fact that so many gullible Europeans allow their hatred of Trump to cloud their judgment is precisely why many of these deals work. They’re so busy obsessing over who won the headlines that they forget to ask who actually won the deal. But whatever. The fact is most Americans don’t care what you post on X about Russian diesel anyway.