The Strait of Hormuz is not merely a body of water. It is the aorta of the global economy’s circulatory system, the narrows through which 20% of the world’s oil and 30% of its liquefied natural gas must pass. When President Donald Trump announced on July 14, 2026, that he would abandon his proposal to levy a 20% toll on ships transiting the strait, the immediate interpretation was that America was retreating from coercive statecraft. But this was a misreading of power in the 21st century. The toll did not vanish because it was illegitimate; it disappeared because it had become functionally obsolete in a world where the medium of sovereignty is no longer the tariff, but the term sheet. The Signal: The Toll Was Never About Revenue Most analysts fixated on the dollar figures: the $20 billion annual haul Trump initially proposed from the strait’s daily 1.5 million barrels of crude....