President Donald Trump claimed that Iran essentially shutting down the Strait of Hormuz “doesn’t really affect” the United States the way it does “other countries.” It’s true that a small share of U.S. oil imports comes from the Persian Gulf. But the U.S. has been affected by the global rise in oil prices.
Since the waterway has been effectively closed – significantly reducing crude oil exports from the Persian Gulf region – oil prices have increased by double-digit percentages, contributing to a 50-cent-plus spike in the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the U.S.
“The US is definitely affected,” Mark Finley, the nonresident fellow in energy and global oil at Rice University’s Baker Institute, told us in an email. Because it’s a global oil market, “if something goes wrong anywhere, the price goes up everywhere,” he said.
Iran has blocked the flow of oil and other goods through the strait in retaliation for joint U.S. and Israeli airstrikes that began on Feb. 28. Iran has threatened to shoot or bomb vessels that attempt to pass through the narrow body of water that separates Iran from Oman and connects the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea.
In a March 9 press conference, Trump talked about offering “risk insurance” to oil tankers operating in the region, possibly by having U.S. Navy ships escort the tankers, “because you have to keep the straits flowing.”
But then he said, “With all of that, it affects other countries much more than it does the United States. It doesn’t really affect us. We have so much oil. We have tremendous oil and gas, much more than we need.” And he added, “I mean, we’re doing this for the other parts of the world, including countries like China. They get a lot of their oil through the straits. So, we’re doing this.”
