Gas hits $4.31, diesel hits a record, Costco doubles oil prices — Trump still blames Ukraine.

…(cont) By that same week, the number had a shelf. Costco's Kirkland Signature full-synthetic motor oil — a case of two five-quart bottles — now runs $57.99, up from roughly $30, a price increase of nearly 100 percent. The Washington Examiner reported the purchase limits. The Daily Caller reported the same limits and supplied the mechanism: a possible consequence of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

That is a shipping lane, not a border with Ukraine. The Daily Caller's own explanation puts the Strait inside the Iran war — not the country the President names when he's asked about prices. The ledger doesn't require a motive to run the numbers: $4.31 at the pump, over $6 for diesel, $57.99 for a case of oil that ran about $30 last time anyone checked, and a purchase limit stapled to the receipt so the count of what's scarce doesn't outrun the price of what's left.

Somewhere between the pump and the register, the story changes hands. At the pump it's a talking point — a foreign war, a name that isn't on the ballot. At the register it's itemized: a case of oil, a limit per member, a total that's nearly double what it was. The talking point doesn't ring up. The receipt does.

There's always room at the top of a supply chain to pass a cost downward; the ledger only answers who's standing at the bottom when it lands. This week, per the receipts on hand, that's the guy loading a case of Kirkland oil into a cart at the posted limit, paying twice what he paid the last time he was in the store, hon.