Trump Pauses Hormuz ‘Project Freedom’; Samsung Vaults to $1 Tn as Oil Breaks $100

Cease-fire gyrations in the Strait recall the 1988 “Tanker War,” when a temporary U.S. naval pause similarly chilled oil prices just before the Iran-Iraq peace (UN 598). Then, as now, a narrow waterway became a lever on global markets. The current episode meshes two mega-trends: 1) the century-long link between Middle-East insecurity and hydrocarbon pricing, and 2) the 2020s-2030s AI hardware super-cycle that is shifting the planet’s wealth centre toward East Asian chipmakers. Whether Trump’s pause leads to a durable treaty or merely a tactical lull will determine if oil’s structurally higher risk premium—reinforced since the 1973 embargo—persists. Samsung’s trillion-dollar moment, meanwhile, signals that semiconductors, not oil, may define strategic power over the next hundred years; but as history shows, from Dutch VOC spice routes to Suez 1956, chokepoints can still upend even the most exuberant tech bull markets.