Trump drops planned Strait of Hormuz toll in favor of Gulf trade deals

President Donald Trump took a day to reverse his plans to charge a 20% toll on cargo going through the Strait of Hormuz, saying that Middle Eastern countries will instead make investment and trade deals with the U.S.

“Based on highly productive conversations with Middle East leadership, I have decided to replace the 20% United States Reimbursement Fee with Trade and Investment Deals that the various Gulf States will be making into the United States,” Trump said on social media.

The president said the investments “will be MASSIVE,” though it’s unclear if these would be new commitments relative to what Trump announced after a visit last year to the Middle East.

The U.S. launched strikes on Iran early Tuesday, hours after Trump vowed to reinstate an American blockade of Iranian ports and charge ships for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran responded with attacks on Middle East allies of the U.S.

The latest exchange of fire leaves in tatters an interim deal meant to pause the fighting, reopen a waterway that is key to world energy supplies and give negotiators time to hammer out a permanent end to the war. Instead, fighting has once again engulfed the region, threatened the global economy and brought warnings to commercial airlines. Unless a diplomatic solution is found quickly, it could intensify into all-out war.

The focus of the conflict now is the strait, through which a fifth of all traded crude oil and natural gas passed in peacetime. Iran effectively shut the passage during the war by attacking and threatening ships — a tactic that proved its greatest strategic advantage. It sent the price of oil, fertilizer and other goods soaring at a time when world leaders were already struggling to address rising costs.

The interim deal was supposed to reopen the waterway, but Iran has attacked ships moving through the strait on a route overseen by the U.S. military that is outside Tehran's control.

The U.S. has now threatened to reopen the strait by force — but experts say that will require a much bigger armada if not tens of thousands of American ground troops. It’s possible Trump will back down, as he has previously.