President Donald Trump‘s oil put — the rhetorical lever Washington pulls whenever crude tops triple digits — was back at play with Swiss-watch timing on Tuesday morning as crude prices surged past $100 overnight on continued disruptions in Middle East.
• United States Oil Fund shares are climbing with conviction. What’s driving USO stock higher?
At 9:29 a.m. ET on Tuesday, the president posted on Truth Social that Iran had informed Washington it was in a “State of Collapse” and wanted the U.S. to “Open the Hormuz Strait” as soon as possible while it tries to figure out its leadership situation.
The post was vintage Trump market-jawboning, the kind that has reliably knocked crude lower throughout the two-month conflict every time benchmarks broke a psychological threshold.
This time, oil barely moved. West Texas Intermediate — as tracked by the United States Oil Fund (NYSE:USO) — held at around $100 and Brent stayed above $111.
Why Trump’s Oil Put Is Losing Its Power
Traders seemed to have learned the pattern.
The flatness response in oil prices on Tuesday contrasted sharply with March 23, when a single Trump post about “productive” talks over a ceasefire with Iran sent crude tumbling double digits, and with prior verbal interventions that produced heavy oil volatility within minutes.
Bloomberg Opinion’s Javier Blas characterized the dynamic as oil-market jawboning weeks ago, arguing the White House was winning the battle over the oil market’s narrative by periodically raising the prospect of an end to the conflict even as the bombing continued.
Trump’s previous posts about imminent breakthroughs reliably preceded crude reversals — but they also preceded several reversals back up when the diplomacy stalled.
The signal-to-noise ratio has degraded.
Goldman Sachs commodities chief Daan Struyven flagged this week that the economic risks are larger than the bank’s crude base case alone suggests, citing refined-product shortage risks that remain regardless of the diplomatic posture.
Goldman lifted its crude price forecasts for the fourth time since the conflict began, now eyeing Brent averaging $90 in the fourth quarter of the year, up from an initial $66 before the war.
Traders currently give the Strait of Hormuz only a 20% probability of returning to normal traffic by May 15, a far cry from Trump’s assessment that Iran wants to open it “as soon as possible.”
Odds of reopening by end of May sit at 38%, again not even a coin flip.
The diplomatic timeline is even more skeptical. An 81% majority believes no meeting will happen before May 11. The market for a permanent peace deal by May 31 sits at just 30%, climbing to 43% for end of June.
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