Axios

President Trump said Tuesday that he has called for a ban on U.S. diesel exports, while Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed the administration is examining whether a full or partial ban is feasible.

Why it matters: Trump's endorsement marks a shift for an administration that has resisted calls to restrict fuel exports, as record diesel prices squeeze farmers and truckers and fuel Republican concerns ahead of the midterms.

• Economists and energy analysts the move could lower diesel prices for Americans in the short term but would likely raise prices globally including eventually in the U.S.

President Trump said Tuesday he is directing "all United States documents" to refer to AI as "super intelligence."

Why it matters: Trump used his United Nations General Assembly speech to dismiss AI safety warnings and frame the race to beat China as an existential, must-win competition.

AI companies have competed on having the best and often most dangerous models for years. Now, they're pivoting to a new focus: cost.

Why it matters: The biggest risk to the AI boom is demand, and recent innovations to make models cheaper while maintaining powerful levels of intelligence have offered a bullish signal.

• As the prices of top models from OpenAI, Anthropic and others come down, usage is increasing dramatically, a trend that points to the kind of demand that will be necessary to justify trillions of dollars in spending.

The Atlantic Council is launching a new organization to strategically elevate the importance of policy and statecraft involving sports on a global scale, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: Sports operate at the nexus of geopolitics, financial power, technology and media, creating space for an influential policy voice across key sectors.

The affordability of gasoline remains "the top issue that the president looks at," Trump energy adviser Jarrod Agen said at an Axios House event Tuesday.

Why it matters: The Trump administration is championing energy savings from its deregulatory push as overseas conflicts, including the Iran war, rattle oil markets, driving up fuel costs and threatening an expensive winter for millions of households.

For decades, businesses assumed that shipping lanes would stay open, trade agreements would endure, and major international relationships would remain stable.

• Those assumptions look less certain than they have in decades, with big economic consequences.

Why it matters: The economy increasingly rewards resilience over efficiency — a shift that increases costs, complicates investment decisions and may weigh on long-term growth.

• It helps explain why what seemed to be a one-off inflationary burst amid the pandemic re-opening half a decade ago has instead become a sustained era of elevated inflation.
• Just as the era of globalization from the 1990s to 2020 created an ongoing downward tug on prices for goods — decades of structural disinflation — this era has become one where supply chain stresses create structural inflation.

What's new: Businesses can no longer assume the rules, trade pacts and geopolitical stability that underpin the economy will still be intact in the near term.

• Companies are responding to a more volatile world by carrying more inventory, lining up backup suppliers and building more flexibility into their supply chains — choices that would have looked unnecessarily expensive a decade ago.
• It's a sharper break from the lean, "just-in-time" model that helped make global commerce faster, cheaper and more efficient.

What they're saying: "In a volatile world, optionality is key. Redundancy is key," Shawn Nelson, CEO of couch manufacturer LoveSac, told investors earlier this summer.

• The furniture company is starting to manufacture some of its couches in the U.S., but is also keeping overseas production — giving it multiple places to turn when tariffs, freight disruptions or other shocks hit.

Mentions of sourcing alternatives on S&P 500 company earnings calls surged as shortages and shipping disruptions exposed the risks of relying too heavily on a single supplier or region during the pandemic.

• They retreated as those strains eased, but never returned to pre-pandemic levels, and jumped again in 2025 as tariffs and geopolitical uncertainty put supply chain resilience back in focus.
• "In the first half of the year, we added new sources for over 50 constrained parts, and we plan to add another 50 in the second half of 2026, increasing the number of multi-sourced components by 15% this year alone," Honeywell Aerospace CEO Jim Currier said last month.
• The aerospace manufacturer's chief financial officer later added that the company is spending four times as much on multi-sourcing compared to the prior year and bringing production in-house.

Of note: Kratos Defense & Security Solutions CEO Eric DeMarco said last month that the defense manufacturer is making sure it has vetted alternatives for every supplier, including "their backup and the backup to the backup."

What it means for prices

The leaner, pre-2020 supply chains were built upon powerful financial and economic logic.

• Maintaining relationships with multiple backup suppliers, constant rerouting of supplies, building bigger inventory buffers — it all comes at a cost, which ultimately shows up in prices.

By the numbers: The era of peak globalization led to cheaper stuff for Americans. From February 1997 to February 2020, for example, the Consumer Price Index for durable goods fell 19%, or about 0.9% per year compounded.

• That amounted to a persistent downward pull on overall inflation, uninterrupted for 23 years.
• In the 6.5 years since then, by contrast, durable prices have risen 17.5%, or about 2.5% a year.

Zoom out: Getting away from super-lean supply chains may prove to have benefits. Some in the Trump administration have spoken of the advantages.

• "We treated efficiency as a substitute for resilience, and consumption as a measure of prosperity," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a May speech. "In the name of efficiency, we began to celebrate 'just in time' while neglecting 'just in case.'"

The bottom line: Corporations are reacting rationally to a more volatile world, and resilience is important — but not free. The costs are being borne every time Americans go to a store.

Last week you might have seen headlines about how NFL star Travis Kelce got swindled by a Texas hedge fund manager who was running a Ponzi scheme.

• Deep in the details is how venture capital played a key role in the deception.

President Trump predicted Tuesday at the UN General Assembly that Iran and the U.S. will strike a deal after the midterms — his latest prediction after repeatedly claiming throughout the war that it was nearly over.

The big picture: The shadow of his Iran war — one that's scattered global supply chains — loomed large over Trump's speech to adversaries and allies alike. The ties with those allies are historically strained, taut from the pull of tariffs, conflict and Trump's threats.

Rising costs are changing dating for more than eight in 10 Gen Z and millennial daters, leaving some to stop courting altogether, per new data from Zelle.

The big picture: Young Americans are pushing off milestones under cost pressures — and the milestones themselves, from getting hitched to buying a home, are getting pricier once they get there.

The global scramble to secure fuel supplies — diesel, above all — is supercharging profit expectations for refineries.

Why it matters: While painful at the pump, surging fuel prices have made refinery stocks a bright spot for the market.

• Of the 126 subindustry groups represented in the S&P 500, oil and gas refining and marketing is by far the best performer of 2026, rising 145.4% through Friday's close, according to FactSet data.

In a new survey, homebuilders around the country say ramped-up Immigration and Customs Enforcement crackdowns are creating huge headaches for their businesses.

Why it matters: The labor strain comes on top of other challenges for the industry: rising mortgage rates, higher prices for key inputs driven by tariffs and the Iran war, as well as growing competition for resources with builders of data centers.

Peloton is debuting its first foldable treadmill — also its most affordable one ever — and new AI-powered coaching tools in a deeper push into running.

Why it matters: The fitness brand — which has been struggling to stem a slide in subscribers since its post-pandemic peak — wants to broaden its image beyond its trademark bikes and classes.