How Trump Made the Entire World Buy American Oil
Jesús Enrique Rosas - The Power Pundit
Apr 12, 2026
Right now, as I write this, there are hundreds of empty supertankers racing across the Atlantic, around Africa, through the Indian Ocean... all heading to one place. The US Gulf Coast. And when they get there, they are going to load up two million barrels of American crude oil each, and ship it to the same countries that used to buy from the Middle East.
The world just switched gas stations. And nobody is talking about what that actually means.
Let me give you the numbers because the numbers tell the story:
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Before this war, about twenty percent of the world’s oil moved through the Strait of Hormuz. That is roughly thirteen million barrels a day of crude oil flowing through a gap of water barely twenty-one miles wide. And when Iran shut it down on February 28th, tanker traffic through that strait dropped by ninety-two percent. Not a little disruption. Ninety-two percent. Almost total shutdown.
So the world had a problem. Asia needs oil. Europe needs oil. Refineries from South Korea to Germany need crude to keep running, and their usual supplier just locked the door.
And what happened next is the part that matters.
Supertankers that were already sailing toward the Persian Gulf... turned around in the middle of the ocean. They changed course. They pointed toward the US Gulf Coast instead. Ship tracking data showed VLCCs, these are the biggest oil tankers in the world, each one carrying two million barrels, literally abandoning their routes to the Middle East and heading to America.
US oil exports are now approaching five million barrels a day. That is near an all-time record. Gulf Coast refineries are running at over ninety-five percent capacity. American fuel exports hit a record in March. The US is not just producing oil for itself anymore. The US just became the emergency gas station for the entire planet.
And American oil has one thing that Middle Eastern oil does not have right now. It does not need to go through a war zone. No mines. No drone attacks. No toll booths. No insurance nightmare. Just load up at the dock in Texas and go.
Now here is what I want you to understand, because this is the part the media completely missed.
For decades, Iran’s biggest threat was not its military. It was not its missiles. It was Hormuz. Every time the United States pressured Iran, every time sanctions got tighter, Iran would say the same thing. “If you push us, we close the strait. And the whole world suffers.”
That was the card. That was the leverage. And it worked, because every American president looked at Hormuz and thought, “We cannot afford that.”
So what did Trump do? He called the bluff.
Iran closed the strait. Oil prices spiked. Brent crude shot past one hundred dollars a barrel, hit a hundred and twenty-six at the peak. Gas prices in America jumped to over four dollars a gallon nationally. It hurt. Nobody is pretending it did not hurt.
But here is what also happened. American oil filled the gap. Not all of it, not perfectly, but enough. The Brent-WTI spread, the difference between world oil prices and American oil prices, blew out to twenty-five dollars a barrel. That means American oil became the cheapest major crude on earth relative to everything else. And buyers noticed.
Every barrel that used to go through Hormuz and now goes from Texas instead... that is money flowing into American companies, American ports, American workers. And every day the strait stays closed, that new reality gets a little more permanent.
Iran’s big card, the card they held for forty years, just got weaker. Not because they stopped playing it, but because the world found another dealer.
And that brings me to China. Because this is where it gets personal for every American watching this.
Before this war, China got about forty-five percent of its oil imports through the Strait of Hormuz. That is roughly five million barrels a day. And a huge chunk of that was cheap Iranian oil. China was buying Iranian crude at massive discounts, sometimes thirty or forty percent below market price, because nobody else could buy sanctioned Iranian oil.
That cheap oil was not just oil. That cheap oil was a subsidy. It made Chinese factories cheaper. It made Chinese goods cheaper. It made Chinese manufacturing more competitive against American manufacturing. Every time you saw a product from China at a price that made no sense, part of the reason was that the energy that built it was practically free.
Now? That pipeline is broken.
China’s oil imports through Hormuz dropped from five point three million barrels a day to about one point two million. Chinese refineries cut production. Chinese manufacturers started raising prices on everything... pickleballs, scarves, toys, electronics... five, ten, twenty percent. Some are talking about doubling prices if the war does not stop soon.
And where is China going to replace that oil? Russia can send some. Central Asian pipelines can carry some. But for the big volumes? China has to compete with Europe and Japan and South Korea for the same barrels coming from the US Gulf Coast and Brazil and West Africa. And those barrels are expensive. A single supertanker from the US Gulf to China now costs eighteen million dollars just for the shipping.
China built its entire economic model on cheap energy. That model just took a liver punch.
And here is the part I want to leave with you. A strong China, with cheap subsidized oil and cheap manufacturing... is not good for any American family. Because that cheap manufacturing is the same force that closed factories in Ohio and Michigan and Pennsylvania. Every dollar China saves on energy is a dollar it uses to undercut American industry.
So when you see those tankers heading to the US Gulf Coast, you are not just looking at an oil trade story. You are looking at the balance of global power tipping.
And this is where I have to bring up Venezuela. Because the sequence matters.
On January 3rd, Trump removed Maduro from power. Weeks later, he announced that American oil companies would rebuild Venezuela’s oil infrastructure. Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves on the planet. Three hundred and sixty-four billion barrels. More than Iraq, Russia, and the United States combined.
The problem? Hugo Chávez and Maduro destroyed the industry. They took a country producing three point six million barrels a day and ran it into the ground until it barely produced a million. I watched Chávez and Maduro dismantle my country piece by piece, so believe me when I tell you what that kind of destruction looks like.
But the potential is still there. Experts say Venezuela could add half a million to a million barrels a day within two years if the investment comes in. And Trump already said American oil companies are going in.
Now think about the order.
January. Secure Venezuela. Start rebuilding the supply.
February. Hit Iran because of the nuclear weapons threat. Accept the temporary pain of high oil prices, knowing that American production and Venezuelan potential will fill the gap.
April. Negotiate from strength, with the world already buying American oil and China already feeling the squeeze.
Gas prices in America are high right now. Four dollars and twelve cents national average. Five ninety-three in California. That is real pain for real families.
But oil prices are already falling from the peak. The ceasefire, even if it is fragile, brought Brent crude down from a hundred and twenty-six to around ninety-seven. And as the strait reopens, even partially, that pressure eases.
The bigger picture is this. The world just learned that it can get its oil from America. And once countries build those relationships, once refineries in Asia and Europe get used to American crude, that business does not just disappear when Hormuz opens again.
Trump did not just win a war. Trump opened a market.
The biggest one on earth.
Jesús.
The Power Pundit
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