US President Donald Trump speaks to reporters before departing for Baltimore County, Maryland, on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C., US, October 6, 2026. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Just hours after President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order aimed at bringing down skyrocketing diesel prices, CNN analyst Matt Egan was there on Tuesday to show audiences exactly how little that means to Trump’s beleaguered Republican Party.
Trump’s signed an order waiving restrictions on cheaper red dye diesel, but other federal officials were already warning that diesel prices are not expected to drop before the midterms. Today, the national average for diesel stands at around $6.32 a gallon, but Egan revealed prices are slated to expand 80 percent despite Trump’s efforts
“The bad news, though, is that help [is] pretty modest and it's not nearly enough to make diesel cheap again,” Egan told CNN anchor Boris Sanchez.
The order Trump signed amounts to a pre-election tax holiday that instructs the IRS to waive penalties for highway use of what's known as red dye diesel, normally restricted for off road use, like in the farming industry. However, farmers already using red diesel throughout the agriculture industry are still raging that they can’t afford to stay in business despite the preexisting tax breaks — thanks to inflated fuel prices resulting from Trump’s attacks on Iran.
And, in any case, Egan said the tax payments aren’t “going away completely. They're just being deferred.
“[The EO] does instruct officials to explore forgiveness,” said Egan, which is a different thing.
“And the problem, of course, is that it's really expensive to fill up right now because of how high prices are,” added Egan. “The cost of filling up an 18-wheeler is almost $1,600 at current prices. Now, if you account for the federal move and state moves on taxes, then the cost would go down, but it would only go down by about $150 per fill up. And it's not really clear how much of this $150 is going to be shared with consumers,” said Egan.
Additionally, mostly red states, including North Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and at least one purple state, North Carolina, are considering foregoing the tax as well. This means truck drivers — who move across state lines — will discover a useless patchwork of painful prices.
“And I talked to a truck driver, a truck company owner in my home state of New Jersey, and he said that this all amounts to just a Band Aid. And he said the Band Aid is arriving pretty late because they've been dealing with sky high prices now since the war started,” said Egan.
Worse, Egan said diesel prices, going back to the year 2000, have had increases of roughly 20 percent in 2021 and 2022, after Covid, and during the Russia/Ukraine war.
“But look where we are now,” said Egan, pointing to a large column of red dwarfing earlier increases. “You're looking at a nearly 80 percent increase in the cost of diesel so far this year, by far on track to be the biggest annual increase since AAA started tracking. And that's what gets lost in this conversation here about the executive order, is that it really doesn't do anything to address the underlying problem.”
The issue is this global shortage of refineries because of the war between Russia and Ukraine and now Trump’s war with Iran destroyed additional refineries in the Middle East.
“[The EO] doesn't do anything to address those problems,” said Egan.
“Matt Egan, that’s not a great looking end of that bar graph,” acknowledged Sanchez, staring at the mass of red at the end.