Trump’s Hormuz Blockade Has Deepened a Historic Shipping Crisis

b0)mqw8xilovnnpea]hl5s7i_media_dl_1.png US Department of Defense April 1

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(Bloomberg) — In early April — after a month of disruption around one of the world’s most important energy chokepoints — US President Donald Trump wrote that with “a little ​more time, we can easily OPEN THE ​HORMUZ STRAIT, TAKE THE OIL, & MAKE A ⁠FORTUNE.”

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Three weeks on, transiting through the Strait of Hormuz has instead become virtually impossible for the first time in history. Trump has imposed a US blockade of Iran-linked ships, Tehran is using its “mosquito fleet” of gunboats to close down the waterway in response — and shipowners say a return to normal shipments is months away, at best.

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Daily transits, already limited since the start of US and Israeli strikes on Iran, are now near zero. That compares to a peacetime average of around 135.

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For weeks, vessel owners and crews had to deal with one major hurdle to attempt an exit: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as Tehran tightened control of the strait. They now have US warships interdicting vessels — some far from the Persian Gulf — and increasingly unpredictable Iranian gunboats, reacting.

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Several shipping officials in the region said the US blockade has had the effect of making the area more volatile, as Iran redoubles efforts to keep the strait shut.

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“What the US is doing, with its blockade, looks to be expanding the area” of risk for ships, said Rajalingam Subramaniam, chief executive officer at Fleet Management Limited, which has more than 400 seafarers trapped inside the gulf. “There’s this posturing going on, and it has actually created more uncertainty.”

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A narrow maritime corridor connecting oil and gas producers in the gulf with the world, Hormuz has become the key flashpoint in the eight-week war with Iran — a daily reminder of the country’s asymmetric ability to impose global economic pain, and a symbol of the intractable nature of the conflict, as both sides dig in.

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“Hormuz is definitely a tool of leverage and a metric of whether Iranian responses are coordinated,” said Rachel Ziemba, senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. “The US blockade was partly implemented to block Iran’s leverage, but ultimately Iran has some space and recent revenue to buy itself some time.”

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Iran’s resilience is built on years of self-reliance, a regime structured to withstand shocks and income from recent oil shipments. The global economy has less time at its disposal.

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Each passing day increases the financial impact of the conflict, not only for import-dependent Asia but for the world — including the US — as shortages and price spikes ripple through energy markets and global supply chains. 

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Crude output from the Persian Gulf nations — some of the world’s most important suppliers — is already 57% below where it was before the war, according to Goldman Sachs analysts including Daan Struyven. Convalescence, even after a full reopening of the strait, could take months. “The recovery may be only partial after a prolonged closure,” they wrote in a note last week.