Oil

Trump's Answer to Iran's Hormuz Crisis: Sell Oil We Don't Have

The administration claims we're a "net oil exporter," but unfortunately that's not quite true.

Joe Lancaster | 4.3.2026 1:45 PM

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(Illustration: Midjourney/Joe Sohm/Dreamstime)

President Donald Trump's war of choice against Iran has already had negative consequences. Perhaps most visibly, we've seen higher gas prices after Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which 20 million barrels of crude oil once passed each day, constituting a quarter of the total global supply.

This week, Trump addressed the status of the war in a rambling, disjointed prime time speech largely free of specifics on how we would get out of the mess he got us into.

One thing he did say is that any country dependent on oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz should simply pivot and buy that oil from the U.S.

But that's not likely to happen, because we simply don't have it to spare.

"Under my leadership, we are [the] No. 1 producer of oil and gas on the planet, without even discussing the millions of barrels that we're getting from Venezuela," Trump boasted. "The United States imports almost no oil through the Hormuz Strait and won't be taking any........

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