The Strait of Hormuz carries roughly a fifth of the world's seaborne oil trade. Tankers are backing up on both sides of the waterway after strikes on Iran over the weekend. Shipping companies are recalculating risk — not just passage, but insurance premiums that reflect the cost of conflict exposure.

Brent crude jumped nearly 6% to 7, briefly touching 2. Some analysts are pointing to 00 as a round-number psychological target. The immediate response was mechanical: tighter supply, wider risk spreads, higher prices. But the second-order effects are structural.

Persistent oil price increases act as a distributed tax. Consumers face higher costs. Businesses absorb margin pressure or pass it forward. Central banks, already navigating fragile inflation targets, suddenly have less room to ease. A 26% year-to-date gain in oil isn't noise — it's a constraint that reshapes monetary policy options across developed economies.

The supply shock isn't solved by producing more if the shipping lane stays contested. And if Trump's estimate holds — four weeks of continued strikes — then the pricing pressure compounds. What started as a geopolitical flashpoint becomes an input into every credit decision, every inflation forecast, every rate path model.

This is the part markets are still pricing in: not just today's oil move, but the knock-on effects if the disruption persists.