President Donald Trump on Monday said the U.S. will impose fees in the Strait of Hormuz “at the rate of 20% on all cargo shipped,” after declaring America the “guardian” of the major oil shipping route.
Trump, in a Truth Social post, also said the U.S. will reimpose its blockade of Iranian ports near the strait, the epicenter of the U.S.’s rapidly reescalating war with Tehran.
The U.S. has rejected Iran’s claims over the strait and its plans to charge ships passing through it. But rather than call for the return of the strait to its prewar status as a toll-free international waterway, Trump’s post asserts that commercial vessels attempting the transit must now pay protection money to the U.S.
Oil prices jumped, and stock indexes fell, following Trump’s announcement.
The strait, which saw 20% of the world’s oil trade before being choked off at the start of the war in late February, “is OPEN, and will remain OPEN, with or without Iran,” Trump wrote in the post.
All countries other than Iran will “have fair and open use of the Strait,” Trump wrote. The assertion came amid new exchanges of fire between U.S. and Iran that have put the prospect of a peace deal further out of reach, while once again slowing tanker traffic in the strait to a trickle.
“The U.S.A. will be, from this point forward, known as ‘THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT,'” he claimed. “But as such, and as a matter of FAIRNESS, will be reimbursed, at the rate of 20% on all cargo shipped, for any and all costs necessary to do the job of providing safety and security to this very volatile section of the World.”
“The process and formation will begin immediately,” he added.
Much about the proposed reimbursement policy was unclear. The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC’s questions about Trump’s post.
It’s not unprecedented for the U.S. to offer protection services to vessels in the Persian Gulf — it did so for Kuwaiti ships under fire from Iran in the 1980s, for instance.
But slapping a 20% charge on ships is “quite an extortionate level,” especially since “it’s unclear that the U.S. can deliver safe passage in the first place,” said David Goldwyn, president of Goldwyn Global Strategies and a former U.S. State Department special envoy during the Obama administration.
“If the U.S. was able to safely escort ships and guarantee no threat from Iran, we would have seen that happen in the past few weeks,” Goldwyn told CNBC in a phone interview. “So I think this is really just bluster.”
Trump telegraphed the policy announcement in a Fox News interview earlier Monday morning, when he said that the U.S. is “going to get paid for guarding” the strait.
“We’re going to keep the strait, and we’ll probably run it,” Trump said.
“We’ll become the guardian of the strait — maybe we’ll call it the guardian angel of the strait,” Trump told Fox. “And we should be reimbursed for that.”
“We can’t be expected to do that for nothing, unlike we had for many years,” he added. “We guarded it for nothing, and now we’re going to guard it, we’re going to get paid for guarding it. A lot of money.”
Since the conflict began, Iran has signaled plans to charge tolls or other fees for ships transiting the waterway — a scenario the U.S. has rejected.
The temporary ceasefire deal the U.S. and Iran signed in mid-June explicitly prohibited Tehran from imposing any charges on commercial ships passing through the strait.
But that deal has been so undermined by repeated attacks in the region that Trump last week declared the ceasefire was “over.”
Trump has previously floated the possibility that the U.S. could charge money to transiting commercial vessels in the strait.
Days after the 60-day ceasefire deal was signed, Trump wrote on Truth Social that there will be no tolls “unless they are imposed by and for the United States of America, should the deal not be completed, for services rendered as the Guardian Angel to the countries of the Middle East for purposes of both past, present, and future reimbursement of costs.”
His latest comments show him doubling down on that possibility in the wake of the ceasefire’s erosion.
— CNBC’s Spencer Kimball contributed to this report.
