Truthoutâ 73%
Day After Threat to Put Fees on Strait of Hormuz, Trump Says He Denounces Ideaâ 14%
By Sharon Zhangâ 91%
7/14/2026, 9:17:28 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 0 faulty reasoning types, including no named faulty reasoning patterns yet, with no single egregious example has been isolated yet. Analysis detected 0 faulty-reasoning hits from 501 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 30% and a BS Rank of â 14% (13,679 of 15,741 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 86.90% of the article peer group.
U.S. President Donald Trump has swiftly backtracked his threat to impose a 20 percent fee on cargo that passes through the Strait of Hormuz, calling off the plan just a day after he announced it â and claiming that, in fact, he never supported such an idea.
Instead of the proposed 20 percent fee, the U.S. will be granted economic deals with other countries in the region in exchange for passage through the strait, Trump said, without providing any specifics.
âBased 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,â Trump said in a post on Truth Social. âThose Investments will be MASSIVE but, at the same time, extraordinarily good for them, and their future.â
Itâs unclear what investments Trump is referring to. Speaking to reporters in the White House on Tuesday, Trump said that he âwas called by different people, different countries, kings and emirsâ after his announcement on Monday morning. However, the Trump administration did not announce new major economic deals with Persian Gulf nations at the time that Trump announced his reversal.
Trump declared on Monday that the U.S. would, from then on, be known as the âguardian of the Hormuz Strait,â a seemingly unilateral declaration. He said that the U.S. would impose a 20 percent fee on cargo that passed through the strait, while the military would reimpose its blockade on Iranian ships. The blockade was initially lifted during the short-lived âmemorandum of understandingâ between Iran and the U.S. that began in June.
The logistics of Trumpâs fee and guardianship plan were unclear, and directly contradicted the position of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who said late last month that âno country is allowedâ to charge fees on transit through the strait under international law.
The president echoed that sentiment after he backtracked on Tuesday.
Speaking of the supposed investments at the White House on Tuesday, Trump said, âI like that, actually, because I donât think anybody should be able to charge a fee for the strait or for any other strait relationship in terms of other sections of the world.â
âBut we were doing it as a reimbursement,â he added.
After Trumpâs announcement on Monday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that he agreed that countries âshould be compensatedâ for passage through the strait. âIran has always been the GUARDIAN of the Strait and will remain so FOREVER. 20% is of course too much. We will be fair,â he said, making light of Trumpâs threat in a post on social media.
The U.S. has continued its bombardments of Iran this week, hitting yet more sites across Iran on Tuesday as Iran retaliated on U.S. assets in surrounding states. Experts have warned that escalation may be inevitable as long as the level of strikes continues.
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