President Trump on Monday floated the idea of imposing an American toll on the Strait of Hormuz, after announcing that the U.S. military would re-establish its blockade of Iranian ports and vessels amid escalating tensions and a surge of Iranian attacks throughout the region.
The president argued that the United States should be reimbursed for its continued defense of the critical waterway, reiterating that because America has no real need for oil exiting the Strait, keeping it open is, in his view, little more than a favor to the rest of the world.
🚨 HORMUZ TRANSIT TOLL: President Trump announced the U.S. will impose a 20% security fee on commercial cargo moving through the Strait of Hormuz, asserting that American naval protection is not free. The hardline shift follows the sudden collapse of a marathon 11-hour… pic.twitter.com/mnJstGkqmh
— Special Report (@SpecialReport) July 13, 2026
🚨 JUST IN: President Trump confirms the United States of America will be PAID by Middle Eastern nations in exchange for securing the Strait of Hormuz
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) July 13, 2026
The Strait of Trump is upon us! 🔥
"I want to get reimbursed, because we're protecting a RICH portion of the world...we are… pic.twitter.com/HVe4ohzPaP
"I want to be reimbursed because we're protecting a very rich portion of the world," the president said. "We're spending money. And so what we've done is we are going to be reimbursed for protection. We're protecting by the countries that we're helping. For instance, you look at the five countries. You have Saudi Arabia. You have UAE. You have Qatar, as I always say. You have Qatar, Bahrain, and by the way, you have others. You have Kuwait, and you have others. And they will do very well, but we think it's appropriate that we don't need them."
"We have more oil than any other country in the world," Trump added. "When you add Venezuela, which has been amazing, which has tremendous amounts of oil that we control, when you add Venezuela and everything else, we have more than 50 percent of the world's supply. We don't need it."
According to the New York Post, if the U.S. were to enact the toll, it would generate between $176 billion and $194 billion annually, enough to cover the compensation of around one million federal civilian employees. The mechanism to implement the toll, however, remains unclear.
“I don’t think that there is a real mechanism for us to charge that toll at this moment, and how we would charge that toll is still an open question of both economic policy and international law,” Brandon Daniels, CEO of supply chain AI company Exiger, told The Post. It also remains unclear why the Trump administration would fight to ensure the Strait remains toll-free for others, yet choose to toll it themselves, effectively implementing another trade barrier in an international waterway.
Thus far, the federal government has not moved to make good on the president’s idea.
“It’s a negotiation,” a source close to Trump told The New York Post. “It’s real until there’s an alternative arrangement.”