Trump Scraps 20% Hormuz Toll After Gulf Leaders Call
The toll on cargo through the Strait of Hormuz lasted one day. Oil kept climbing anyway: Brent stood at $86.19 on July 15, as the blockade of Iranian ports holds and strait traffic has halved.
- Trump scrapped the 20% toll on cargo passing through the Strait of Hormuz on July 14, just one day after announcing it.
- Brent held above $85 on July 15: it rose 1.72% to $86.19 a barrel, while US WTI traded at $80.40.
- Only 57 vessels transited the strait between Friday and Sunday, against roughly 130 a day before the conflict.
- Brent is up 19% from pre-conflict levels.
The 20% toll on cargo passing through the Strait of Hormuz lasted exactly one day. Donald Trump announced it on July 13, and by July 14 he said he was withdrawing it and replacing it with trade and investment arrangements with the Gulf states. The reasoning was brief: Gulf leaders had called him and, he said, told him they would like to invest in the United States “at record amounts.”
The reversal followed pressure from Gulf allies, for whom a transit charge would have raised the cost of exporting their own crude. The arrangement has moved from customs ground to investment ground: instead of revenue per vessel, Washington is counting on promised inflows. No specific sums, deadlines or signatories have been published, so the commitment amounts to a statement for now.
For the market, however, scrapping the toll was a side issue. Brent for September delivery held above $85 on July 15, gaining 1.72%, or $1.46, to $86.19 a barrel, while US WTI added 1.4% to near $80.40. Brent had settled at $85.92 a day earlier. The yield on that contract does not track White House policy: it tracks the physical availability of barrels.
Why does oil keep rising when the toll is gone?
Because the toll was never the main source of risk. The blockade of Iranian ports remains in force, and the United States continues to position itself as the “guardian” of the waterway. A trader plotting a route is not calculating a 20% commission: he is calculating the probability that the vessel gets through at all, and at what insurance premium.
The numbers bear that out. Only 57 vessels transited the Strait of Hormuz between Friday and Sunday, a drop of more than 50% in a week. Before the conflict, roughly 130 ships a day moved through that corridor. Halved traffic is not a statistical nuance: it is a physical shortfall of cargo that enters the supply chain with a lag of several weeks, just as the market moves into seasonally stronger demand.
Measured against pre-conflict levels in late February, Brent is up 19%. That spread was not created by a single announcement, so it cannot be erased by a single withdrawal.
Who pays the bill for halved traffic
Bart Melek, global head of commodity strategy at TD Securities, warns there is room for further gains. “I suspect that a move to $100 is quite possible, should it become apparent that physical shortage risks are real and increasingly likely,” Melek said. The gap between $86 and $100 a barrel is not a trading nuance: it is the level at which shipping costs, the chemical industry and every importer without a long-term fixed price get recalculated.
Serbia sits in that second group. Domestic fuel prices track Brent with a lag, so removing the toll brings no relief at the pump. The message runs the other way: prices are not easing simply because the toll fell, because the toll was never the cause. The cause is passage through a strait that carries a significant share of the world’s oil.
The open question is what happens if the promised investment fails to materialise and the blockade holds. In that case Washington has given up measurable revenue in exchange for an unmeasurable promise, while the risk in the strait stands untouched.
Do you expect higher fuel prices to reach domestic pumps in the coming weeks?
