Donald Trump's Ex-Energy Chief Dan Brouillette Calls Diesel Ban 'Terrible'

Dan Brouillette, who ran the Energy Department for the final year of Donald Trump's first term, called the president's proposed ban on diesel exports "a terrible idea" in a Fox Business interview that streamer Hasan Piker replayed on Wednesday—a break from inside Trump's own former Cabinet.

The clip aired as the national average price of diesel hit a record $6.53 a gallon on Tuesday, up 77 percent from a year earlier, according to AAA data cited by CBS News. The surge has been driven by the war with Iran and the shutdown of tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, and it has become a midterm liability for the president, whose approval stands at 38.3 percent in PolitiKool's polling average.

Brouillette's objection is not isolated. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and current Energy Secretary Chris Wright have both pushed back on a flat ban, while Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has taken a more neutral stance, saying only that the administration was reviewing whether a ban is feasible. A White House official on Wednesday denied a Politico report that the administration was preparing a 90-day export halt.

What Dan Brouillette Said About the Diesel Export Ban

Brouillette, who served as energy secretary from 2019 to 2021, appeared on Fox Business's Varney & Co. on Wednesday; Piker played the exchange in full.

"It's a terrible idea," Brouillette said, comparing the plan to the Biden administration's pause on liquefied natural gas export permits, which Trump's team lifted on the grounds that it deterred investment. "The same thing is going to happen here. It's a terrible investment signal to send to this industry," he said. "But even more importantly, even with regard to the price of diesel in America today, which is quite high, it will do nothing to lower that price in the near term."

His reasoning turned on geography: "You can't move diesel very easily in the United States because we don't have pipeline capacity. Most of our refining capacity is in the Gulf Coast area, Texas, Louisiana," he said, adding that trapped fuel would have to be stored somewhere.

"It's pure politics. And I think it looks to me to be more about this election than about the economy." — Dan Brouillette

Asked whether the proposal was political, Brouillette answered: "It's pure politics. And I think it looks to me to be more about this election than about the economy."

Hasan Piker Says the Ban Is a Midterm Gesture That Will Backfire

Piker, a left-wing Twitch streamer who has argued for months that the Iran campaign is unwinnable, agreed with Brouillette's critique while framing the cause very differently.

"We've already lost. We lost the moment that we decided to strike Iran and Iran fought back," Piker said, calling the ban "another move in the direction of complete catastrophe in the energy markets." He predicted the "America First initiative of this sort will offer modest respite in the short term and will lead to catastrophic failure in the long term."

Piker argued the government cannot direct refiners to serve domestic buyers "if the government is servile to the interests of capital," and dismissed cable commentary that blamed the proposal on left-wing thinking: "Is there ever an instance where they actually hit the right on something that the right is doing, that the right has been agitating towards? Or is it all still somehow Donald Trump's secret communism that is responsible?"

Why Refining Capacity Makes a Ban Hard to Execute

Energy Information Administration data support Brouillette's storage argument. As of January 1, 2026, the Gulf Coast region held about 9.9 million of the country's 18.2 million barrels a day of operable crude distillation capacity, or roughly 54 percent, according to Table 1 of the agency's Refinery Capacity Report. The East Coast held about 5 percent, and, as Piker noted on air, it relies partly on imports.

The United States exports roughly 1.5 million barrels of diesel a day, about one-fifth of the 8 million barrels traded by sea globally, Time reported, citing EIA figures. Analysts told the magazine a ban would likely lower prices in the Gulf Coast and Midwest but could raise them on the coasts if global prices climbed and fuel could not be rerouted quickly enough.

Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, told Fortune the "cure would be far worse than the disease," and American Petroleum Institute CEO Mike Sommers said restricting exports "would hit an already-tight market with another supply shock," Fortune reported.

Trump's Own Cabinet Splits on the Proposal

Trump endorsed the idea while taking questions from reporters at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday. "I've said let's not send out the diesel. We make a lot of diesel. I've called for it," he said.

His officials were divided. Wright said at a New York event on Wednesday that "the blunt tool of banning diesel exports definitely doesn't work," Reuters reported, since refiners that cannot export "run out of places to store it" and would have to cut runs, pushing up gasoline and jet fuel prices.

Burgum said the administration "would consider an export ban if we thought that actually might lower prices, but that's not the case," Newsweek reported, and Bessent said only that the team was examining "whether a full or partial ban would work."

What Happens Next

Wright said the discussion inside the administration now centers on "the most efficient way to get more diesel into the United States of America, and continue maximum flows of gasoline and jet fuel," rather than a flat ban. Trump told reporters at the U.N. on Tuesday that a decision would come "fast, one way or the other."

With the midterms less than six weeks away and diesel prices at a record, the question is whether the president overrides the advice of his current and former energy chiefs or settles for the voluntary measures parts of his Cabinet prefer.