Of all the things Donald Trump has done to disrupt global commerce, from levying punitive tariffs to tearing up trade deals, few would be as consequential as withdrawing and leaving the rest of the world to secure the Persian Gulf.
Traffic through the strait has dropped to a handful of ships daily from about 135 before the war, with Iran allowing passage mainly for its own exports. Those conditions are putting at risk roughly one-fifth of global oil flows, driving up prices and injecting volatility into energy markets.
European and Asian officials, who spoke to Bloomberg on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said the conflict has eroded faith in the US role as protector of the high seas, raising concerns about energy prices, shifting security calculations around key choke points and growing doubts about Washington’s ability to manage the consequences of the war.
And it’s more than just Hormuz. The Trump administration’s campaign to blow up speed boats suspected of ferrying drugs across the Caribbean and doubts about whether the Navy made sufficient efforts to save crew members of an Iranian warship it sank off the coast of Sri Lanka have raised questions about the US’s commitment to the rules that protect all sailors at sea.
A Pentagon spokesperson didn’t answer a question about whether the US was still committed to ensuring freedom of navigation, saying only that the military “continues to provide the president options” regarding the strait. The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.
“When the Strait of Hormuz is strangled, the world’s poorest and most vulnerable cannot breathe,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Thursday. “Freedom of navigation must be upheld.”
Those include prohibition against regulating vessels that move between open waters, even if the route cuts through their territorial seas. Iran’s attempts to deny passage or charge fees in the Hormuz strait — as much as $2 million per transit — challenge that system.
In response, Trump has alternately suggested asserting US control over the waterway and leaving other nations to take responsibility for it.
“The countries of the world that do receive oil through the Hormuz Strait must take care of that passage,” Trump said Wednesday in a televised address on the conflict. “They must cherish it. They must grab it and cherish it. They can do it easily.”
“This will not be a crisis that ends with a ceasefire announcement,” said Angelica Kemene, head of market strategy at Optima Shipping Services in Athens. “It’s a structural shift in how the Gulf operates as an energy export corridor.”
The threat of Iranian attacks has kept most ship operators out of the strait since the US and Israel began strikes on Feb. 28 and that caution is unlikely to fade quickly, leaving any initial reopening dependent on naval escorts.
“It is a violation of maritime law to impede the free flow of travel in international waters,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday. “It’s illegal to hit commercial shipping and sink them. That’s what the Nazis did in World War II in the Atlantic.”
Asked about the US’s commitment to freedom of the seas, a White House official said Iran won’t be allowed to set up a permanent system that controls access to the Hormuz strait. The US has already destroyed 44 Iranian mine-laying vessels during the war and Trump is confident the strait will be opened very soon, the official said.
Ensuring the strait remains open has long been a core US objective in any conflict in the region. The US has intervened before to keep Hormuz open, notably during the so-called tanker war between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s.
The economic toll of Iran’s control over Hormuz is already clear: Iran’s grip on Hormuz comes at the expense of other major Gulf producers, with the potential to reshape global energy supplies.
Iraq’s exports plunged by about 80% in March compared with last year’s average daily volumes, while Saudi Arabia has rerouted crude through its east-west pipeline to the Red Sea, now running near capacity at roughly 7 million barrels a day. Even so, the kingdom was facing a drop of more than 25% in exports last month.
“The war in the Middle East is creating the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market,” the International Energy Agency said in early March.
Insurance costs have surged alongside the risk. Additional war-risk premiums that were about 0.15% of a ship’s value before the war have jumped as high as 10% in some cases in and around the strait, deterring operators from returning even if hostilities ease.
The disruption if allowed to persist could carry geopolitical consequences — especially in Asia. Washington’s commitment to that policy has been visibly demonstrated by the so-called freedom of navigation operations, or Fonops, that the US Navy conducts by asserting its right to sail through contested waterways.
If the US ends its campaign without reopening the strait, it risks setting a precedent that it won’t challenge expansive Chinese claims to the South and East China seas. Southeast Asian officials said such an outcome would deal a significant blow to US credibility in keeping sea lanes open.
It would also increase the incentive for Chinese President Xi Jinping, who now commands the world’s largest navy by number of ships, to assert greater influence at sea.
That shift is already shaping how governments think about their security.
Officials said it could push countries to strengthen their capabilities around chokepoints, such as the Strait of Malacca, and coordinate more closely to uphold maritime norms under international law. The conflict has also shown that countries with sufficient military power and political will can move to control critical waterways.
While Europe is less directly dependent on Hormuz, its economy relies on the smooth functioning of global shipping routes. European officials said the episode is forcing a rethink of how allies protect sea lanes.
If the US were seen as unwilling or unable to keep key waterways open, countries may have to assume greater risk and adjust how they deploy forces, one official said. Major European economies also are assessing how to cushion any impact to other vulnerable shipping routes such as the Red Sea and the South China Sea.
“Iran controlling the Strait of Hormuz after the war would be a game-changer,” said Lucio Blanco Pitlo III, a Philippine foreign policy analyst. “US credibility as guarantor of unhampered navigation of crucial waterways will suffer.”
