| Good morning and welcome to White House Watch. In today’s edition, we’ll be digging into: US struggles to build a coalition to reopen the Strait of Hormuz Why small US drillers aren’t cheering soaring oil prices Trump’s obsession with a Chicago-based shoe label
Donald Trump is struggling to rally a coalition of nations to police the Strait of Hormuz, which has largely been closed off to shipping since the US and Israel launched their war against Iran more than two weeks ago. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Monday that the UK was not planning to send warships to the Gulf, warning that the country would not “be drawn into the wider war”. Germany, France and Japan have dismissed the idea of sending vessels to open the strategic waterway, through which some 20 per cent of the world’s oil exports passes. Trump warned in an interview with the FT on Sunday that Nato faced a “very bad future” if allies failed to assist with opening up the strait.
“It’s only appropriate that people who are the beneficiaries of the strait will help to make sure that nothing bad happens there,” Trump told the FT’s Edward Luce, arguing that Europe and China are dependent on oil from the Gulf. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said yesterday that Nato was a “defence alliance and not an intervention alliance”, as he rebuffed the US president’s call for help. Trump said that “numerous countries” had told him they were “on the way” to help with opening the strait, but did not mention the names of the nations involved. The president said that there were some countries that “greatly disappointed” him: “I always said, you know, the problem with Nato is we’ll always be there for them, but they’ll never be there for us. “We’re going to have to start thinking more wisely in this country,” he said. (Nato’s collective defence obligations under article 5 of the alliance treaty have been invoked only once in its history, following the September 11 attacks.) Trump also singled out China as well as allies Japan and South Korea, saying that they “should be thanking” the US for the strikes in Iran, adding that he was “surprised” they were “not eager” to send warships to the strait. Asked about his timeline for the war, Trump said it was unlikely that US combat operations would end this week, but said “it will be wrapped up soon”. The war, now in its third week, has already affected Trump’s broader foreign policy agenda. On Monday, Trump said the White House had asked Beijing if it could postpone his visit to China by “a month or so” for a highly anticipated summit with Xi Jinping, which was intended to stabilise the turbulent relationship between the two countries. “I’d love to but because of the war, I want to be here,” Trump said. Trump’s war against Iran may have caused oil prices to surge past $100 per barrel, but independent US operators are not cheering, Stephanie Findlay reports from Midland, Texas. Smaller drillers and operators working in the Permian Basin, the world’s most prolific oilfields, are wary of vast swings in the price of oil. Trump said he wanted prices to drop below $50 a barrel in time for the midterm elections in November. “These swings really high and really low aren’t really good for anybody,” said independent Texas oilman and Trump supporter David Arrington. The surge in prices caused by Iran’s attacks on the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil exports pass, has brought a temporary reprieve for producers after years of low crude prices, which prompted major US oil and gas companies to cut jobs and costs. But Trump’s emphasis on affordability and energy prices ahead of the midterms has unnerved independent producers that do not have the resources of giants such as ExxonMobil or Chevron to weather fluctuations in prices as easily.
“The threat of $50 oil and, you know, what Trump says he usually gets, put a cloud over the industry and so we started dialling back our plans,” said Steven Pruett, president and chief executive of Elevation Resources, an exploration and production company in Midland. | 
