Trump says US will blockade Strait of Hormuz | Hacker News Reader

Trump says US will blockade Strait of Hormuz

cnn.com

66 pointsTomte86 comments

USA is racing with Iran who can get to 200USD per barrel faster.

Asia is already in trouble on account of this, that won't go much further without something breaking.

https://www.osac.gov/Content/Report/910d11da-595a-40a4-836c-...

It’s a great opening for Chinese EV and green energy tech producers.

Is this a Trump version of "nobody move or the n**er gets it?" from Blazing Saddles? Taking yourself hostage so the other side doesn't have to do it?

Seems a pretty obvious goal, yeah.

Raise the prices to extremes for oil and gas producing allies through regional uncertainty, bomb infrastructure to keep them high, encourage Israel to keep doing what Israel, flooding the EU with asylum seekers.

He's padding his own pockets, crippling the EU's and continuing to centralise influence around himself. Pretty typical megalomania. Y'all voted for this. Twice.

I have a conspiracy-adjacent question. Let’s say your goal was to reduce globalization, but tariffs were too unpopular a way to do so. They too directly put the blame on the president for what happens.

Would starting a war with Iran, shocking energy and transportation prices, raising the costs of exports from every other country be a more solid mechanism? Especially when the US is a net exporter from oil and could conceivably protect domestic industries from the same?

It also - if Trump loses the presidency, the Iran war impacts will continue for years, the impact of tariffs would end relatively quickly.

> Especially when the US is a net exporter from oil and could conceivably protect domestic industries from the same?

The oil companies would likely be extremely unhappy if they were not permitted to export their products.

True I mean it’s high risk and maybe dumb, but I wouldn’t put it past the current thought leaders to turn against traditional free market ideology.

>> tariffs... too directly put the blame on the president. Would starting a war with Iran... be a more solid mechanism?

War puts the blame on the president even more directly.

>> Especially when the US is a net exporter from oil and could conceivably protect domestic industries from the same?

The US is a huge net importer of goods. The oil surplus is rather small, has been recorded only for the last 3 years and it can't meaningfully change the US balance of trade.

> shocking energy and transportation prices, raising the costs of exports from every other country... and the US could conceivably protect domestic industries from the same?

Nothing will be protected, quite the opposite, the US will be the country hardest hit by inflation because, given the huge net imports, we are the country that benefits the most from unimpeded trade and lower cost of production in other countries.

Trumps tariffs didn't decrease the trade deficit, in fact the deficit for 2025 was significantly higher than the pre-covid 2019. The deficits for Feb and Mar 2025 were the highest monthly deficits in history, beating the previous records by almost 100%.

>> Let’s say your goal was to reduce globalization

"reducing globalization" is a meaningless term, reducing the standard of living is what matters, choking international trade will cause higher reduction in the US than in other countries.

> I mean it’s high risk and maybe dumb, but I wouldn’t put it past the current thought leaders to turn against traditional free market ideology.

"Ideology" is a fig leaf, what matters is the money and power in the hands of the most special interest groups, it's a small club and you ain't in it.

Trump's a lame duck. He's out January 2029 with the next inauguration.

This assumes the American system survives intact until then, which is likely, but no longer feels guaranteed. Let’s see how the midterms go, if Trump is able to get away with throwing out results in states that don’t like him, we are in serious trouble.

The Americans will keep voting like they have been. Trump's only a symptom

I think it's a bit more than that, he's the accelerant.

Thinking too small. Look at the opportunity cost incurred by over focusing the military on Iran. That's force and munitions not going to Ukraine, not usable to protect Taiwan, the extension of hostilities will be essentially the equivalent of an attack on our NATO and SEA allies, if they can't get their shipping through the Strait. Russian oil is no longer sanctioned by the U.S... This is Putin's wet dream. The unmaking of NATO played out in realtime. Our President could not be a more transparent Russian asset if he tried. With every day, those in the Kremlin are probably rejoicing at this ally they've found they don't even need to seemingly pressure to do their bidding. Even if this is all coincidence and it's really just his dementia driving this.

I hope everyone who voted for him is really happy with what they're getting.

Trump doesn't think like this.

Trump decided to bomb Iran because Netanyahu told him that it'd be cool if he did it. He didn't have a coherent plan beyond "bombs cool." This is why we got the rapidly changing and totally incoherent set of plans for the war and the strategic objectives.

Trump is incapable of understanding that he isn't winning at something. So we are getting a "no, fuck you" response. The most thought I could possibly imagine going into this is that Trump has seen that it is possible to extract wealth from shipping lanes and just decided that he deserves that now.

While I agree that Trump doesn't think like this, there are alot of other players in this game.

There are no other meaningful players in US politics. Everything is driven by Trump's id.

Trump’s id is famous for biasing towards the perspective of the last person Trump talked to.

>Trump decided to bomb Iran because Netanyahu told him that it'd be cool if he did it.

Netanyahu has compromising video footage of Trump from the Epstein files. That's why.

Isn’t this published in the plan? Not sure it’s a conspiracy when the plan is public.

Great to see the US is asserting its control over the Straight of Hormuz. Just like Iran "asserted control" by threats with missiles, we now assert control in the same fashion with our navy. Crazy! :)

The US is shooting down its citizens, blockading vital commerce routes, and accumulating a dangerous amount of nuclear weapons. It seems ripe for regime change.

Are we allied with Iran now?

No. Trump is only allied with himself and associates who keep placing "insightful" bets on Polymarket.

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/04/08/newly-created-polym...

What an utterly pathetic man. He gave away the Strait of Hormuz to Iran with an ill-conceived plan. Even the US military-intelligence community had long thought attacking Iran a poor idea, and that's really saying something! And now instead of taking his licks and finding some way to downplay a swift loss to an elective way, his new genius response is to commit an act of war against the same countries Iran is attacking?

The interesting bit to me is that everybody just plays along. Rather than that he gets thrown off his perch and replaced by someone sane. Trump is an idiot, no doubt about it. But all those that voted for him and that continue to enable him are the bigger idiots, and if they're not idiots they are probably hoping to profit from the chaos he's creating.

That's because chaos is a good time to do some grabbing. You could see this during the downfall of the former Soviet Union, which in spite of being dirt poor still made a handful of families obscenely wealthy. Now imagine being able to do a similar resource grab on the scale of the modern United States.

Trump 1, COVID, Trump 2, the Russian war on Ukraine, AI and a couple of more wars... It's a miracle things haven't gone further down - yet. But I'm really wondering how long our social constructs will be able to withstand this kind of concerted assault.

> Trump is an idiot, no doubt about it. But all those that voted for him and that continue to enable him are the bigger idiots, and if they're not idiots they are probably hoping to profit from the chaos he's creating.

For all the assurances that the US military is an army with the ultimate task to protect the Constitution and bound to democratic principles, they sure seem to view the Commander in Chief as the sole authority, even if his orders are evidently illegal or undermine the democratic system (because Congress was bypassed).

As the war is currently going, I'd have expected at least some generals or officers to refuse orders, not because they suddenly switched sides, but simply because the orders are not democratically legitimized anymore. But nothing like this seems to have happened so far.

(Not even starting with ICE...)

Oh, I think that has definitely happened. A lot of very high placed career military have been fired recently and even if they're not saying much the fact that it happened speaks volumes. These were people with decades of service. I think at least some fraction of those firings was because of refusal to carry out certain orders.

What they should do is speak out, but possibly their future income depends on not speaking out.

I think that there are stories but unreported for good reason. I heard from a pastor friend that he showed up to a house where one of his congregants was inside (with ICE outside), and basically asked them for mercy, and the supervisor was like “Actually, there is lightning in the area so we’ll need to go away but we will come back later.”

So not complete rebellion, but a little bit of humanity. Viktor Frankl talks about how there were some “good” guards at the concentration camp.

I just wonder if all he wanted was another trinket gifting ceremony in his office with "the CEO of Iran", and he thought everything he's approved was strictly for show. That seem to explain a lot of his visible confusions and weird messaging, to me...

So the problem of skyrocketing oil prices because of the Iranian control of Hormuz will be solved by a blockade, which will prevent even more oil from reaching the market. Nobody is 1) this stupid to do it 2) this stupid to bite on this threat

Is it a coincidence that he posts an insane sounding headline grabber the moment that his dictator buddy Orban announces his loss? The idea that a dictator could be ousted is very consequential to Trump, and isn’t an idea he would want to allow to spread.

Interesting times intensifies.

Random US soldier: "Are we the baddies?"

Iran is far from being the good guys, but I cannot see the US as the good guys here either.

There doesn’t have to be a good guy

There's a comedy sketch in there somewhere. I expect it'll be called the Straits of Trump soon.

At this point I'm skeptical enough to believe this is yet another attempt at market manipulation.

Trump pulling an Uno Reverse and feeling very smart about it?

The whole thing has "You are not divorcing with me, I am divorcing with you" vibes.

Indeed, it is pathetic.

so now iran’s allies need to get their oil elsewhere. could only mean one thing for prices.

I wonder if Donald Trump is aware that he is asking for a repeat of Pearl Harbor.

I think the first shots looked like the strategy at Pearl Harbor. So it’s more appropriate to learn that Japanese success at Pearl Harbor didn’t grant Japan any choices about how the war would end.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com