15JUL

Trump floats then drops Hormuz toll

2 min read

13:29UTC

Trump proposed a 20% toll on Hormuz shipping around 13 July, then dropped it a day later for Gulf states to "invest in the United States" in exchange for naval protection.

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ConflictAssessed

Key takeaway

Trump swapped an illegal transit toll for Gulf investment pledges, banking the same money without the legal objection.

Donald Trump proposed a 20% toll on Hormuz shipping around 13 July, then abandoned it a day later, saying "I don't think anybody should be able to charge a fee"⁠¹. In its place he said Gulf leaders had offered to "invest in the United States with billions and billions of dollars" in exchange for naval protection⁠².

Read alongside the enforced blockade, this is the second US reversal in a single day: militarise the strait in the morning, monetise the protection by evening. A per-vessel transit levy is the mechanism the European Union rejected on maritime-law grounds when Trump first raised a Hormuz toll, citing the transit-passage rights protected under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The investment offer yields the same result, Gulf capital flowing to Washington against US naval cover, without the legal hook a toll hands its opponents.

Both moves point one way, towards Washington charging for a passage it has now taken upon itself to control.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Charging ships to pass through an international strait runs into the same legal rulebook whoever tries it, so swapping a toll for 'Gulf states invest in America' changes how Washington gets paid, not the underlying legal problem that sank the toll in the first place.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

The toll's collapse follows the same legal exposure the EU flagged in April: a blanket per-vessel charge on an international strait breaches the transit-passage guarantees in UNCLOS Article 38, a position Washington has itself used against Iran's rival toll claims since June.

A second driver is transactional: an investment pledge framed as billions of dollars into the US economy gives Trump a headline figure without the diplomatic cost of appearing to violate the same maritime law Washington invokes against Tehran.

What could happen next?

Precedent
If the investment-pledge model becomes the template, Gulf capital commitments into the US could become a recurring bargaining chip in future Hormuz disputes, replacing toll proposals that keep running into the same maritime-law objection.

Source Landscape

This story draws on centre-left-leaning sources from Israel

Israel

Primary parallel: Trump floated a similar toll-and-interdiction scheme in April, ordering the Navy to interdict vessels that had paid Iran a Hormuz toll; the EU rejected the underlying premise then, citing UNCLOS transit-passage guarantees, and Rubio told Gulf foreign ministers in June there was 'zero support' for any toll or fee.

Counter-parallel: Oman's 30 June service-fee proposal to Washington, modelled on the voluntary Malacca and Singapore Strait contribution schemes, treated a transit charge as legitimate cost recovery rather than a toll, a distinction this reporting does not show Trump engaging with before dropping his own version.

A per-vessel Hormuz toll would have added a direct, quantifiable cost to every barrel transiting the strait, stacking on top of the war-risk premiums insurers already charge.

A bilateral investment pledge instead shifts the payment from shippers to Gulf sovereign capital flows, leaving near-term freight costs unaffected while giving Washington a larger, less transparent revenue stream to negotiate over.

Consensus view: Atlantic Council trade-policy commentary has noted a US-imposed Hormuz toll would face the same UNCLOS Article 38 objection the EU raised against Iran's own toll ambitions in April, making Trump's climbdown a return to the position Washington itself has held with Gulf partners since the Manama communique.

Counter-view: Gulf state officials, reflected in Oman's own service-fee proposal to Washington in late June, have argued a transit charge can be legitimate cost recovery rather than a toll, a distinction the US toll proposal collapsed and the investment-pledge alternative sidesteps entirely.

Key tension: Whether swapping a toll for Gulf states investing 'billions and billions' directly in the US achieves the same revenue effect under a different legal label.

Sources:Times of Israel

Mentions:Donald Trump →Strait of Hormuz →Atlantic Council →Manama →Iran →UN Convention on the Law of the Sea →Singapore →European Union →United States →Washington →Oman →

First Reported In

Update #154 · US enforces Hormuz closure with blockade

Times of Israel· 15 Jul 2026

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Different Perspectives

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China

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