Government and Policy Sector

President Trump declared the U.S. the "Guardian of the Hormuz Strait" and announced a 20% fee on all cargo transiting the critical waterway — through which 20% of global oil traded before the U.S.-Iran conflict choked it off in February — while reinstating a naval blockade of Iranian ports effective Tuesday. The move follows the collapse of a June ceasefire deal and escalates a rapidly deteriorating confrontation with Tehran, sending oil prices higher and stock indexes lower. Legal experts and the UN's International Maritime Organization were blunt: there is "no legal basis" for mandatory transit tolls on an international strait, and critics called the fee "extortionate" given that the U.S. has not yet demonstrated it can actually guarantee safe passage. For global shipping and energy markets, this is the story — a unilateral U.S. toll regime on one of the world's most critical chokepoints is either a bold new revenue model or a bluff, and oil traders are currently betting they can't afford to find out which (CNBC).

Three federal bank regulators — the OCC, FDIC, and NCUA — issued guidance Monday framing immigrants without U.S. work authorization as an "elevated credit risk," a move that stops short of new rules but effectively pressures banks to tighten lending to this group. The guidance follows a May executive order directing regulators to use the financial system as an immigration enforcement tool, reinforcing a risk-based compliance framework (meaning banks must weigh a borrower's ability to repay against broader legal and employment uncertainty). The practical scale is modest — only an estimated 5,000–6,000 ITIN (Individual Taxpayer Identification Number) mortgages were issued in 2023 against 4.6 million total originations — but critics warn the chilling effect could extend to legal immigrants and push unbanked populations toward unregulated, fraud-prone alternatives. For banks, the real cost may be compliance overhead and reputational risk, not loan losses (CNBC).

President Trump called on the Senate to pass the Clarity Act — sweeping crypto regulation legislation — invoking the memory of Sen. Lindsey Graham, who died over the weekend, though Graham played little role in crypto policy (CNBC). The bill, which would create a regulatory framework for digital assets like Bitcoin and stablecoins (crypto tokens pegged to stable assets like the dollar), cleared the Senate Banking Committee 15-9 in May with bipartisan support. Industry heavyweights Coinbase, Circle, and Ripple back the bill, hoping clear rules unlock fresh institutional investment, while banks oppose it over fears stablecoin competition could drain deposits and crimp lending. Graham's death narrows the Republican Senate majority to 52-47, making every vote count and giving Democratic holdouts — who want stronger ethics guardrails on crypto-profiting politicians like Trump himself — real leverage to extract concessions.