00:00Hey friends, I'm here to talk about antojitos, but I can't actually afford it because gas is so
00:05expensive. $4.89 if you pay with cash, $4.99 is $5 if you're paying with credit card. This is
00:12the
00:13one that kills you though. It's costing the average truck driver $1,200 to fill up a single
00:18tank. Now, here's the thing. You probably don't fill up diesel, but you know who does? Your truck
00:23driver. And what do they got in the back of the truck? Well, all your groceries. And they take
00:27that to the grocery store where then you go and buy, but like that gets baked into the price of
00:32those groceries. We can't afford it at the pump. We can't afford it in our groceries. All of that
00:39because of a stupid war we shouldn't be fighting that's raising the price of gas groceries and so
00:43many other things. And we're paying the price. Now, Mike Rogers for his part, he said it was a win,
00:50win, win this war. I'm not winning. Are you winning? Antojitos not winning. And just yesterday,
00:57he decided that the war has to end. Now, I wonder why that's the case. Maybe it took
01:01gas getting to $5 and his poll numbers tanking for him to change his mind. But we need principal
01:06leadership. If you were for this war from the very jump and all of a sudden, because your poll
01:10numbers suck, you're not for it anymore. That just tells me that all you care about is political
01:15expediency, not actual principle. Anybody could have told you this was a dumbass war we shouldn't
01:19have been fighting. The dumbass war we shouldn't have been fighting and now we're paying the price.
01:25America is producing more oil than any other country. So why can't it produce enough diesel?
01:33That is the question now confronting the U.S. economy as diesel prices surge following the start
01:40of the Iran conflict in February. According to Reuters breaking views, diesel prices have risen about
01:47twice as fast as gasoline prices since the conflict began. And the reason is not simply a shortage of
01:55crude oil. The bigger problem is refining. Diesel is the fuel that keeps a huge part of the American
02:03economy moving. Around 80 percent of U.S. diesel consumption is used for transportation, equal to
02:11roughly 3 million barrels a day. Trucks use it, freight companies use it, farm equipment uses it, and the
02:19supply chain depends on it. So when diesel becomes significantly more expensive, the impact does not
02:27stop at the fuel pump. It can eventually show up in the price of goods. According to Brown University
02:34researchers, Americans have already spent an additional 112 billion dollars at gas stations since the beginning
02:42of the war. And diesel represents around 51 billion dollars of that additional spending, despite Americans using
02:51substantially less diesel than gasoline. Here is where the U.S. refining problem becomes critical.
02:58American refineries are already operating at around 97 percent of capacity. That leaves very little room
03:06to increase diesel production quickly. And there is another structural problem. The last major U.S. refinery
03:13was built roughly 50 years ago. Building a new refinery is not a quick solution either.
03:20A new facility can take around a decade to complete. And with domestic fuel demand having peaked years
03:27ago, companies have had little incentive to spend enormous amounts of money building additional
03:33capacity. So America can produce enormous quantities of crude oil, but turning that crude into the specific
03:41fuels Americans need is a different challenge. And right now, diesel is the pressure point.
03:47There is another complication. The United States is also the world's largest diesel exporter. That has
03:55triggered a debate in Washington over whether some diesel exports should be restricted in order to increase
04:01domestic supply. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has raised the possibility of banning exports.
04:08Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley has also called for an export ban. But the Trump administration has rejected the idea,
04:16at least for now, arguing that restricting exports may not bring down prices and could provoke
04:23retaliation from other countries. Reuters also notes that cutting exports could make the global fuel system
04:30less efficient at a time when refining capacity is already tight worldwide. So for American diesel users,
04:37there are few easy alternatives. And that is especially important for the trucking industry. Freight companies
04:44typically operate on relatively thin margins. Knight Swift Transportation, one of America's major trucking
04:52companies, reported an operating margin of about 6% in the latest quarter. That means a major increase in fuel
05:00costs can quickly put pressure on profitability. Consider the math. The average total cost of operating a
05:07truck in 2025 was around $2.34 per mile, according to the American Transportation Institute. And if a truck gets
05:17roughly 6 miles per gallon, a diesel price increase from about $2.81 a year ago to the level cited
05:26by
05:26Reuters on Monday translates to roughly 47 cents of additional fuel cost per mile. That cost does not simply
05:35disappear. It can be passed along the supply chain to manufacturers, retailers, and ultimately consumers.
05:43And this is where the diesel shock becomes an economic story. Higher trucking costs can affect retail,
05:51they can affect manufacturing, they can affect farming, and they can raise transportation expenses for
05:57companies selling everyday consumer products. Take Amazon. The company spent around $27.9 billion in shipping
06:07in the latest quarter. That figure was larger than the operating profit it generated from its retail
06:13division during the period. So even a relatively small increase in transportation costs can become
06:20significant when multiplied across an enormous logistics network. And there's a bigger concern. The US economy
06:28has so far shown surprising resilience despite the oil shock. But diesel is different from gasoline. Gasoline
06:36affects consumers when they drive. Diesel affects the cost of moving goods. And when the cost of moving almost
06:44everything starts rising, the pressure can spread through the entire economy. So the central problem,
06:51according to the Reuters analysis, is therefore not that America lacks oil. It's that America has
06:57limited refining capacity to turn that oil into the diesel the economy needs. And with refineries already
07:05operating near full capacity, there may be very little room to increase supply quickly. So the question now
07:13is not simply how high diesel prices can go, it's whether the rising cost of transporting goods
07:19becomes the next major channel through which the Iran conflict hits the American economy.
