The American-Israeli war on Iran has spiked oil prices, as tankers hesitate to transit the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean through which some 20 percent of global oil trade passes. To keep oil flowing from the region, President Trump has promised U.S. naval protection to ships traveling through the strait, if necessary.
This is not a new idea, but a continuation of President Jimmy Carter’s 1980 pledge to defend the Persian Gulf after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which, compounded by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, heightened threats to the global oil supply. Mr. Carter’s commitment led to the creation of CENTCOM, the U.S. Central Command, and became the driving rationale for a permanent U.S. footprint in the region.
But long-term U.S. military basing has failed to stop Iran from attacking Gulf shipping, even as it has discouraged investment in a more robust global oil transportation network, setting the stage for today’s oil price spike worries.
As the Iran crisis plays out, the United States has better options than doubling down on Mr. Carter’s approach, but they require us to understand and correct America’s unique vulnerability: The country is more exposed to oil price shocks than any other major power, including China.
Many Americans might be surprised to hear this. The United States is the world’s largest oil producer and a net petroleum exporter. But oil trades in a global market at a single market price.
Experts compare the oil market to a giant bathtub with many spigots and drains. The total level of oil in the bathtub, plus market speculation about whether that level will go up or down, determines the oil price — even for countries such as the United States, which pours a lot of crude into the tub.
Every country that draws from the bathtub suffers from price shocks, but the United States suffers more than its peers.
The U.S. economy has a high oil intensity; it consumes a lot of oil to produce each dollar of its gross domestic product.
America’s economy is more than 40 percent more oil-intensive than China’s, even though China is a net oil importer and sources much of its oil from Persian Gulf countries, including Iran.
The European Union’s economy is half as oil-intensive as America’s. Even Russia, a petrostate, is about 20 percent less reliant on oil per unit of economic output than the United States is.
China is still a developing country in many ways. Developing countries tend to consume more oil than fully industrialized ones.
But China also recognized its strategic vulnerability to oil shocks years ago and has been methodically decreasing it — not with warships, but with electric vehicles and high-speed electric rail.
Chinese gasoline consumption appears to have peaked in 2023, far earlier than analysts expected. According to an analysis by BloombergNEF, some two-thirds of all electric vehicles sold worldwide are purchased in China, and within the next year, China’s E.V. sales are projected to exceed the entire U.S. car market.
The United States’ oil intensity problem is set to worsen relative to China. The Trump administration has ended E.V. subsidies, discouraged investment in charging infrastructure and weakened U.S. fuel economy standards.
The International Energy Agency has revised projections of American E.V. adoption sharply downward to only 20 percent of new American car sales by 2030, compared to over 40 percent under previous policies. That number is expected to be around 80 percent in China.
So what should Washington do right now?
