Trump tax is 60p per litre of diesel
But you live in the UK, don't you?
And that 60p you pay at the pump transmits through everything you buy. Food, groceries, household stuff, every damn thing you ever think of buying.
You decided to put up with it, dip into savings, try to make more money. But how are various countries navigating this?
When the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed in late February 2026 following targeted strikes and heavy mining, the global energy market braced for an apocalypse. The numbers looked fatal: a chokepoint responsible for 20% of the world’s petroleum and a third of its liquefied natural gas (LNG) had seen its traffic collapse by 95%. Daily vessel exits plummeted from a steady average of three per day to a mere trickle of seven successful transits over an entire quarter.
Yet, three months into the conflict, the world hasn’t ground to a complete halt. Instead, the crisis has catalyzed a frantic, historic rewrite of global logistics. National oil companies, rising superpowers, and regional rivals are deploying a mix of "dark transits," overland rail lifelines, and high-stakes diplomatic gambits to keep energy flowing.
The map of global trade is being redrawn in real-time, and the strategies separating the winners from the losers come down to raw geography and domestic infrastructure agility.
1. ADNOC and the "Dark Shuttle" Strategy
While Western commercial fleets have largely abandoned the Persian Gulf due to a 600% spike in war-risk insurance premiums, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) has emerged as the conflict's most resilient operator.
ADNOC’s playbook is defined by two tactical maneuvers: corporate insulation and localized logistics loops.
The Navig8 Shield:
Rather than begging reluctant international shipowners to enter an active war zone, ADNOC is relying on Navig8—a shipping entity majority-owned by ADNOC’s logistics arm and China’s petrochemical giant, Wanhua Chemical Group. This joint-venture structure provides both the vessels and a layer of diplomatic cover, given Beijing's deep ties to Tehran.
The Dark Transits:
To cross the perilous waters of Hormuz, these tankers operate in stealth mode, completely disabling their Automatic Identification Systems (AIS) transponders.
The Shuttle Loop:
Instead of risking massive, slow-moving Supertankers (VLCCs) on long international voyages directly from domestic berths, ADNOC is running short, aggressive shuttle runs from Zirku Island, Ruwais, and Das Island. These shuttles dump their cargoes in safer, open-water ship-to-ship transfer zones off Fujairah, Sohar, and the western coast of India, where standard commercial vessels then pick them up for final delivery to Asia.
This frantic urgency isn't just about preserving immediate revenue. It is fueled by the UAE’s seismic decision to formally depart from OPEC on May 1. Having freed itself from Riyadh-mandated production quotas, Abu Dhabi is determined to aggressively monetize its multi-billion-dollar capacity expansions. The war has bottlenecked their physical transit, but ADNOC's aggressive tactical maneuvering ensures that their newly independent energy strategy remains viable.
2. China’s Overland Rail "Lifeline"
While the United States and its allies attempt to strangle Iran’s economy via naval blockades, Beijing has leaned heavily into its strategic partnership with Tehran by completely abandoning the sea.
China’s response to the Hormuz blockade is a case study in Belt and Road infrastructure weaponization. Utilizing the *Five Nations Railway Corridor* framework, China has rapidly scaled up a massive overland rail network running from manufacturing hubs like Xi'an and Yiwu, through Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, and directly into northeastern Iran.
[China Hubs: Xi'an/Yiwu] ➔ [Central Asia: Kazakhstan/Turkmenistan] ➔ [Tehran, Iran]
This land route offers two massive structural advantages:
1. Speed:
The overland rail journey takes between 12 to 15 days—nearly slashing pre-war maritime transit times in half.
2. De-Dollarization:
Because Western sanctions have locked Iran out of the SWIFT banking network, China and Iran conduct 100% of the trade for these rail cargoes—predominantly bitumen, industrial components, and petrochemicals—in Chinese Yuan (RMB).
The Catch? Scale. A singular modern mega-max container ship can carry upwards of 20,000 TEU. A freight train tops out at roughly 50 to 100 cars. While China’s rail corridor is an economic godsend that keeps Iran’s internal economy on life support and secures vital chemical inputs for Beijing, it is a drop in the bucket compared to the maritime volumes lost.
3. India’s Chabahar Gambit Hits the Sanctions Wall
New Delhi’s strategic response to the Hormuz crisis has been far more painful, caught squarely in the crossfire of great-power geopolitics.
For over a decade, India’s crown jewel of regional infrastructure has been Chabahar Port. Located on Iran’s southeastern coast, Chabahar sits beautifully just outside the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf of Oman. It was explicitly designed to bypass both the Hormuz chokepoint and Pakistan, offering India a direct multimodal gateway to Central Asia and Europe via the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC).
When the mines closed Hormuz, Chabahar should have had its historic moment. In theory, India could ship goods directly to Chabahar's deep-water berths, offload them, and move them overland, bypassing the conflict zone entirely.
Instead, New Delhi has run into a diplomatic brick wall. The conditional U.S. sanctions waiver that allowed India to develop the port expired on April 26. With Washington and Tel Aviv locked in an active kinetic conflict against Tehran, the U.S. has shown zero appetite for leniency, threatening secondary sanctions on any entity doing business with Iranian ports. India has completed its primary $120 million infrastructure commitments, but its private sector is paralyzed by the fear of American financial blacklisting. As a result, Chabahar remains a brilliant asset frozen by geopolitical reality.
4. The Broader Asymmetric Landscape
Beyond the major Asian powers, the rest of the world is adapting through a brutal mix of infrastructure pivoting and economic pain:
Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Pivot:
Riyadh has mitigated its own Hormuz exposure by maxing out the capacity of its East-West Crude Pipeline. The Kingdom is pumping millions of barrels of oil from its eastern fields directly across the Arabian Desert to the port of Yanbu on the Red Sea, bypassing Hormuz entirely—though this has structurally concentrated its vulnerability around the Bab el-Mandeb strait.
The Great African Detour:
For broader East-West consumer trade, the maritime industry has effectively abandoned the Middle East. Mega-carriers like Maersk and MSC are routing all Asia-Europe traffic around South Africa's Cape of Good Hope. This adds 10 to 14 days to journeys, spikes fuel burn, and has triggered a cascading global shortage of empty shipping containers, driving up inflation across Europe.
South Asian Austerity:
For nations without domestic pipelines or major geopolitical leverage—like Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh—the crisis is catastrophic. Facing rolling blackouts and unable to afford spot-market LNG rates, these nations have resorted to extreme energy rationing, including government-mandated four-day workweeks.
The Ultimate Reality
The logistical workarounds observed over the last three months prove that the global supply chain is incredibly resilient, capable of bending under pressures that would have broken it a decade ago.
However, "bending" is not the same as "replacing." Land corridors, dark transits, and transshipment shuttles are highly expensive, legally dubious, and physically constrained sticking plasters. The hard truth of global economics remains unchanged: there is currently no infrastructure network on Earth capable of fully replacing the 20 million barrels of oil that used to flow smoothly through the Strait of Hormuz every single day. Until the chokepoint is cleared and secured, the global economy is merely buying time on rations.
Trump has been a pain in the rear, since he assumed office, even if you don’t live in the US. His tariffs were painful last year, this year he has ensured all of us paid increased prices on everything we buy.
You have a choice. You can still believe he is God’s gift to humanity, and continue paying the ‘right wing cost of living increases’, or you can take charge of your own destiny. Which way are you going?