Episode Details

The recently announced two-week ceasefire between the US and Iran is giving investors hope that traffic will normalize soon in the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway that before the war serviced a fifth of global oil supply. As countries search for workarounds to plug the shortfall, a spike in global commodity prices has reinvigorated inflation worries, prompted expectations for central bank tightening, and weighed on global growth sentiment. The path of US inflation this year will depend on the pass-through to consumers and whether the Strait sustainably reopens. In this special edition of Simply Put, we talk with geopolitical analyst Rachel Ziemba about the Strait of Hormuz’s role in global commodity markets, how higher raw material costs affect consumer prices, and what it will take to normalize traffic in the Strait.