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.’ rapidly reescalating war with Tehran. The blockade will resume Tuesday at 4 p.m. ET, U.S. Central Command said.
“We’re attacking them tonight, and we’re taking out all of their capability for anything having to do with the strait,” Trump told reporters at the White House later Monday afternoon. “And I think in the end, we will end up controlling the whole thing.”
The U.S. has rejected Iran’s own plans to charge tolls to ships passing through the strait, which maritime experts, regulators and even top Trump administration officials have said is illegal under international law.
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 the 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.
Trump, in a letter to the Senate dated July 10, said the U.S. had commenced new military action against Iran on July 7. The letter was sent in accordance with the president’s requirements under the War Powers Resolution.
Under the same resolution, Congress last month approved a measure directing an end to U.S. hostilities in Iran, though that step was mostly symbolic and did not force Trump to withdraw troops.
Much about the proposed reimbursement policy was unclear. The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC’s questions about Trump’s post.
Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said in an X post Monday afternoon that Iran, not the U.S., controls the strait and deserves to “be compensated for this service.”
“20% is of course too much. We will be fair,” Araghchi wrote.
The United Nations’ International Maritime Organization, which regulates maritime transport, said after Trump’s post that it “stands firmly against charging fees for passage through straits used for international navigation.”
“There is no legal basis through which to introduce mandatory tolls simply to transit through a strait,” the organization said in a statement to CNBC.
That stance echoes the one offered by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who said last month, “No country is allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway. That’s existing international law.”
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 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 and Emily Wilkins contributed to this report.
