Donald Trump has leaned on a simple argument throughout the Iran war: the United States produces so much oil that the Strait of Hormuz is no longer America’s problem. It is an appealing line because it sounds like strength and independence at once. It is also deeply misleading. The real question is not whether the US still imports as much Gulf oil as it once did. It does not. The real question is whether Americans live inside a global energy system whose prices are still shaped by what happens in Hormuz. They do. And that means a serious shock in the strait would still hit the United States hard, not through dependence in the old import sense, but through exposure to globally priced oil, fuel, freight and inflation.

On paper, Trump can point to real changes. US crude production hit a record 13.6 million barrels per day in 2025, and only eight per cent of US crude imports came from the Middle East Gulf region that year. Those numbers help explain why many Americans assume the country has outgrown Hormuz. But they do not prove what Trump wants them to prove. They show that America imports less Gulf oil than before. They do not show that America is insulated from a shock in the world’s most important oil chokepoint. That is the sleight of hand in Trump’s rhetoric: he treats lower direct dependence as if it meant safety from global price transmission.

Hormuz still matters on a scale no slogan can erase. Around 20 million barrels a day move through the strait, roughly a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil trade, along with a major share of global liquefied natural gas. Pipelines can bypass part of this flow, but nowhere near enough to replace it all. That is why even short disruptions in Hormuz can have consequences far beyond the........

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