The Hormuz closure is the largest energy disruption since the 1973 oil embargo. Brent hit $126 a barrel. The strait was averaging 153 vessel transits a day before the conflict. It’s now effectively zero. Not a price shock. A physical severance.
The oil story you know. Here’s what you don’t: a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz. Urea prices have already jumped 43% right at the Midwest planting window for soy and corn. 85% of Middle Eastern polyethylene exports are blocked, repricing packaging, auto components, and consumer goods simultaneously. Qatar and UAE supply 99% of Pakistan’s LNG and 72% of Bangladesh’s, countries with almost no storage buffer and nowhere to turn. Even China can’t get through. 55 Chinese vessels are trapped inside the Persian Gulf right now.
Research from TU Delft is explicit: after four weeks of closure, supply chain damage stops being linear and goes exponential. We are past that threshold. $1.2 trillion in annual Gulf trade flows are frozen. Economists are modeling 0.4 to 0.8 points of added global inflation on top of everything already baked in from COVID, Ukraine, and tariffs, and that assumes a near-term resolution.
The missiles are the headline. The grocery bill is the story.
