We’ve all been feeling some of the pain. But now we have some insight.
Because a key Trump official gave a huge update on the economy.
President Trump’s decision to waive sweeping new sanctions on Russia has split the political right in a way few foreign policy moves have. On one side are Americans who want lower fuel prices right now and have grown tired of a war that seems to have no end. On the other are hawks who say any relief for Moscow rewards Vladimir Putin. This weekend, Energy Secretary Chris Wright stepped into the middle of that argument.
Speaking on ABC’s This Week, Wright defended the president’s executive order, signed late Friday, waiving new sanctions and tariffs two days before they were set to take effect. He insisted the waiver is not a gift to the Kremlin. In the words of the ABC report, Wright asserted that the exemption was not an “economic lifeline” for Russia.
His case rested on incentives. “This is an incentive to Russia that if they can reduce the conflict with Ukraine, [if] they can get an energy ceasefire or reduce the conflict such that they have diesel to export will allow it to flow to world markets,” Wright said. In other words, Washington is dangling relief and asking Moscow to earn it by dialing back the fighting.
Wright went on to explain why he thinks Russia gets little from the arrangement unless it changes course. “The only way Russia gets benefit from this move means they have to export diesel, which means they have to either consume less diesel internally, reduce the war effort, or have an ability to repair their refineries, which they only can get to through a peace agreement with Ukraine, an energy ceasefire, or a step towards peace,” he said. It is a tidy argument: no peace move, no payoff.
The background matters. Diesel prices have been setting repeated records this fall as escalations in the war have hit Russian refineries, and Trump announced an agreement with Putin on Oct. 9 under which Russia would make additional diesel supplies available to the U.S. and global markets. “Lower prices for Americans, especially our Great Farmers, Ranchers, and Truckers, is my Greatest Priority,” Trump wrote at the time. For truckers, farmers and anyone filling a tank, that is a message with obvious appeal.
The sanctions that were waived came from a sweeping Russia sanctions law Trump signed last month, passed with bipartisan support and aimed at Russia’s energy revenues. Critics say suspending the new measures hands Putin a financial boost. The waivers remain in place until Trump or the secretary of state, in consultation with other administration officials, decides further action is appropriate, and the order does not eliminate sanctions imposed under earlier executive orders.
Ukraine’s president has not been quiet. Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the earlier diesel easing “an obvious weakness,” and after a large Russian attack on Ukrainian power facilities he argued that easing pressure on Moscow encourages Putin to keep attacking. He described the waiver as a “financial reward for Putin.”
Some Republicans share the unease. Rep. Mike Lawler said, “I fully understand the need to get oil and diesel prices down, and we want to do that, but not at the expense of putting money in the pocket of Vladimir Putin so that he can continue to wage this illegal war in Ukraine.” That is a sensible way to frame the dilemma, and it is not a partisan jab: it is a real conflict between two things many conservatives want.
Here is where a populist perspective has something distinctive to say. Many working Americans never wanted to be the world’s paymaster for a war on the other side of the globe, and they see the price they pay at the pump as a direct consequence of conflicts they did not choose. Prioritizing American prices over open-ended pressure campaigns is a defensible, even attractive, position for people who feel Washington has long put foreign priorities ahead of their own.
But populists should hold the administration to its own logic. If the waiver is an incentive, the incentive has to produce something. Wright’s argument depends on Moscow actually reducing the conflict, and the early evidence is not encouraging: reporting this week describes a large Russian assault on Ukrainian energy infrastructure following the announcement, and Ukraine disputes that any energy ceasefire exists. A deal that one party does not honor is not a deal; it is a subsidy.
The administration also owes the public clarity about what the waiver buys. How much diesel will reach world markets, how quickly, and at what effect on prices? Fuel costs matter to every family, and if the policy lowers them, the president deserves credit. If it does not, the political and strategic price of waiving the sanctions will have been paid for nothing.
There is a middle path that is worth taking seriously: keep the waiver conditional, set clear and verifiable benchmarks, and be prepared to snap the sanctions back if Moscow fails to deliver. That would address the hawks’ fear of a free handout while keeping faith with Americans who want relief at the pump.
For now, Wright has made the best case the administration can make: the waiver is leverage, not a lifeline. Whether it works will be decided not on Sunday talk shows but in the refineries and on the battlefield, and Americans will find out soon enough whether the incentive was real or just another promise Putin never intended to keep.
