President Trump on Tuesday walked back his statement that the United States would levy steep fees on cargo shipped through the Strait of Hormuz, adding to a string of about-faces that have highlighted his lack of a clear path out of the war with Iran.<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump\u2019s reversal came just one day after he announced that the United States would charge fees worth 20 percent of a ship\u2019s cargo, despite months of public insistence from his own administration that any such fees would violate international law.<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump has decided instead to move forward with trade and investment deals with Persian Gulf states, he said on Tuesday. The idea of such deals, the details of which remain scarce, are the latest turn in an intensifying battle between Iran and the United States to control the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial artery for global energy supplies. The two countries have traded attacks over the waterway for the past week, in effect shattering their month-old cease-fire and sending oil prices on a roller coaster.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s what to know.<\/p>\n
What did Trump say?<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump announced his reversal in a lengthy social media post on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cBased 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,\u201d Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social, his social media platform.<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump later told reporters in the Oval Office that various \u201ckings and emirs\u201d of Gulf allies had called him and convinced him to allow them to invest in U.S. companies instead of paying the fees, which experts said could more than double the cost of shipping oil<\/a> through the strait if levied at 20 percent.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think anybody should be able to charge a fee for the strait,\u201d Mr. Trump said, adding that he felt his new plan was \u201cmuch better.\u201d<\/p>\n When he initially announced his plan for the toll, the president had described it as a way for the United States to recover the cost of providing military protection to vessels using the waterway. It was \u201ca matter of FAIRNESS,\u201d he wrote in a social media post.<\/p>\n In walking back the notion, Mr. Trump wrote that the United States was set to restart a \u201cFULL Blockade\u201d of Iranian ports and the strait was \u201copen to ALL Ship traffic except for Iran.\u201d (In fact, shipping traffic through the waterway has nearly entirely ceased as the two countries exchange strikes.)<\/p>\n What had Trump administration officials said about a U.S. toll?<\/p>\n After Iranian officials repeatedly said that they intended to monetize the strait, senior U.S. officials, including Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, spent months insisting that the Trump administration was vehemently opposed to the imposition of any tolls or fees in the waterway.<\/p>\n \u201cNo country is allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway. That\u2019s existing international law,\u201d Mr. Rubio said.<\/p>\n This didn\u2019t deter Mr. Trump from announcing his own toll. He raised the possibility last month<\/a> after signing a temporary cease-fire agreement with Iran, even though that deal included language<\/a> that Tehran has interpreted to mean it has authority over the strait<\/a>. The memorandum of understanding also said that no country would collect tolls for 60 days, though it left open the possibility for such charges beyond that.<\/p>\n What do we know about the new investment deals?<\/p>\n Very little, beyond what Mr. Trump has promised. It remained unclear on Tuesday which countries had agreed to invest in the United States and how exactly they would do so.<\/p>\n The investments from the Gulf states would be \u201cMASSIVE but, at the same time, extraordinarily good for them, and their future,\u201d Mr. Trump said on social media.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will see Factories, Plants, and Equipment pour into the United States at Historic levels, which will create additional millions of High Paying AMERICAN Jobs!\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Trump on Tuesday walked back his statement that the United States would levy steep fees on cargo…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295791,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[76302,76301,1452,77882,63586,14670,9,11,10,5007,9670,22786,35553,62208,17898,1069,901],"class_list":["post-295790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-abbas","tag-araghchi","tag-donald-j","tag-embargoes-and-sanctions","tag-freight-cargo","tag-iran","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-oil-petroleum-and-gasoline","tag-oman","tag-ports","tag-ships-and-shipping","tag-strait-of-hormuz","tag-tolls","tag-trump","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}