Shipping disruption weakens Gulf-US trade

• Fall in purchases from Saudi and UAE
• Lower sales of aluminium and fuel
• Impact of Hormuz closure deepens

Bilateral trade between the US and GCC countries fell sharply in May on the deepening economic impact of the Iran conflict and effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Already weak American imports from the region in April fell further the following month, according to the latest figures from the US Census Bureau.

The value of purchases from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain declined drastically, the data published this week shows.

Saudi exports hit a near five-year low, with Emirati and Qatari shipments at levels not seen since 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Only Oman boosted sales to the US, albeit marginally and on par with levels from May last year.

The data is consistent with the fact that energy tankers or commercial vessels that exited Hormuz before the war began on February 28 had reached US shores by May, said Rachel Ziemba, a geo-economic and country risk expert who runs Ziemba Insights in New York.

More recently loaded cargo was stuck inside the waterway.

The Census data logs exports and imports based on when goods leave or enter the US.

“This is when the effects of the Hormuz closure were at their greatest,” Ziemba said. “It is really a story of what could be exported was only what could be rerouted.”

The preeminent products that typically travel from the Gulf to the US, such as aluminium, fertilisers and fuels, broadly logged lower sales value month-on-month, the data showed.

In 2025 the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) together comprised 8 percent of global primary aluminium production capacity and 16 percent of US imports, said Alexandre Andlauer, a Paris-based senior global energy analyst with data platform Kpler.

“Interruption to raw material inputs and energy supplies, combined with direct kinetic attacks, means output is now running at around two-thirds of capacity,” Andlauer wrote in a blog post this week.

US tariffs on the metal, however, remain an even greater factor than the Middle East war in driving prices up and reshaping the US aluminium supply chain, he said.

The Gulf also typically accounts for 16 percent of global fertiliser shipments, according to shipping industry association Bimco.

The war and Hormuz closure caused those to drop 11 percent year-on-year by mid-June, said Filipe Gouveia, Bimco’s shipping analysis manager.

The trade of phosphates, urea and sulphur – materials used to make fertiliser – dropped by an even larger 28, 12 and 30 percent respectively.

Gouveia predicted on June 18 – the day the US and Iran signed an interim peace deal – that fertiliser exports from the region would rise under a durable ceasefire because of pent-up demand.

Thirty fertiliser-laden cargoes were ready to leave the strait at that point, and 70 empty ships could quickly load additional volumes.

“However, exports from Qatar and the UAE could remain below pre-war levels since they have sustained damage to gas fields and refineries,” Gouveia said in a statement.

Variable pattern for US exports

American exports to the Gulf experienced more mixed conditions in May, with some month-on-month increases to Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman, and decreases to Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar.

The US generally sells the region bulkier and more expensive goods, such as weapons, aircraft and nuclear reactor parts, which tend to have bumpier trade patterns based on the timing of large, ad-hoc contracts, Ziemba said.

Advanced Nvidia microchips, the first batch of which arrived in the UAE in May, would not necessarily show in the US Census data since they are likely to have been transferred directly from Taiwan, where they are made, she added.

Given the slow progress in reopening Hormuz amid continued uncertainty over the US-Iran peace process and safety of navigation through the strait, Ziemba did not expect June data, which will be released next month, to depart drastically from May’s.

Trade between the US and the GCC is small overall and forms only a part of the much larger geostrategic and economic bilateral relationship, Ziemba said.

Further reading:

• War’s grip on Middle East economies tightening, IMF says
• The economic consequences of the peace … for the UAE
• ‘War opened doors for us’, says Dubai trade chief