Original author: Gao Zhimou

Original source: Wall Street Journal

Goldman Sachs warned in its latest flagship macro report "Top of Mind" released on March 20 that current global assets have only been adequately priced for "inflation shocks" while completely ignoring the devastating impact of high energy costs on global economic growth.

The report states that the "deadlock" in the Strait of Hormuz means that the war is extremely unlikely to end in the short term. Once market expectations are proven false, "downward growth (recession)" will be the second shoe to drop, at which point global asset pricing will experience an extremely violent reversal.

Based on the risk of a prolonged crisis, Goldman Sachs has comprehensively lowered the growth forecasts for the United States, Eurozone, and other major economies for 2026, raised inflation expectations, and significantly postponed the next interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve from June to September.

It is worth mentioning that, according to a report by CCTV News on March 22, Iran's representative to the International Maritime Organization stated that Iran allows non-"enemy" vessels to pass through the Strait of Hormuz but must coordinate with Iran on security issues and make relevant arrangements.

Why is victory in war difficult to achieve? The "deadlock" of the Strait of Hormuz and the illusion of escorting

Goldman Sachs believes that the core suspense of this conflict lies not in whether the U.S. military can achieve tactical victory, but in when the "global energy chokehold" of the Strait of Hormuz can be unlocked.

In the report, former commander of the U.S. Fifth Fleet Donegan provided detailed data to confirm the military advantage of the U.S. and Israel.

However, military advantages cannot be converted into a conclusion to the war.

Vakil, director of the Middle East program at the Chatham House, believes that Iran views this conflict as a "battle for survival." Iran learned lessons from the "Twelve Days War" in June 2025—when it made concessions too early, exposing its weaknesses.

Thus, Iran's current strategy is to utilize low-cost drones and other asymmetric weapons to wage a protracted war, spreading the costs as widely as possible until it secures safety guarantees for the long-term existence of the Islamic Republic (including substantial sanctions relief). Vakil emphasized:

"Iran has no motivation to end this war until it sees a reliable path to those guarantees."

Furthermore, Iran's command system is much more resilient than the market imagines. Vakil pointed out that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is managing daily defense through a decentralized "mosaic command structure," and this bureaucratic system is still functioning effectively.

Former U.S. Middle East envoy Ambassador Dennis Ross revealed another deadlock from Washington's perspective: If it were not for Iran's control over the Strait of Hormuz, Trump might have already declared victory. Trump today has every reason to claim that Iran cannot pose a conventional threat to its neighbors for at least five years, but "as long as Iran controls who can export oil and who can pass through the Strait, he cannot declare himself a winner and then cease fire."

Ross believes that in the absence of U.S. military control over territory along the Strait, a mediation facilitated by Russian President Putin may be the quickest way to break the deadlock. However, the conditions for mediation are currently absent, especially since the key figure capable of coordinating various factions (including the IRGC), former Speaker of Parliament Ali Larijani, was recently killed, significantly reducing the probability of reaching a peace agreement in the short term.

So, can military escort break the deadlock of physical supply disruption? Donegan's answer is extremely grim: capable of escorting, but without the capacity to restore normal flow.

Despite the United States and its allies (such as the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, etc.) expressing their readiness to participate in escorting and conducting relevant military exercises over the past 15 years, Donegan emphasized that the escort model inherently lacks economies of scale.

He assessed that military escort can only restore at most 20% of normal oil flow, plus an additional 15-20% from land pipelines, leaving a huge gap from normal levels. There is no "switch" to restore supply; ultimately, the initiative lies in Iran's hands—

"This is not just a military issue, but a game of motivations and leverage among various parties."

Unprecedented energy supply disruption—oil prices could surpass the historical peak of 2008

Data from Goldman Sachs' commodities team quantifies the historical scale of this shock: Current estimated losses in oil flow from the Persian Gulf could reach 17.6 million barrels per day, accounting for 17% of global supply, a scale 18 times larger than the peak of Russian oil disruptions in April 2022. Actual flow in the Strait of Hormuz has plummeted from a normal 20 million barrels per day to 600,000 barrels per day, a decrease of 97%.

Although some crude oil is being rerouted via the Saudi East-West pipeline (to Yanbu Port) and the UAE Habshan-Fujairah pipeline, Goldman Sachs calculates that the maximum net redirection flow from these two pipelines is only 1.8 million barrels per day, which is negligible.

Based on this, Goldman Sachs constructed three medium-term scenarios for oil prices:

• Scenario One (Most optimistic: Restoration of pre-war flow within one month): Expected average Brent crude oil price of $71/barrel in Q4 2026. Global commercial inventories will face a hit of 6% (617 million barrels), and IEA member countries releasing strategic petroleum reserves (SPR) and absorbing Russian waterborne crude can hedge about 50% of the gap.
• Scenario Two (Disruption lasting for 60 days until April 28): Expected Brent price in Q4 2026 will soar to $93/barrel. Inventory impacts will expand to nearly 20% (1.816 billion barrels), and policy responses can only hedge about 30%.
• Scenario Three (Extreme: 60 days of disruption overlapping with long-term damage to Middle Eastern production capacity): If Middle Eastern production remains 2 million barrels per day below normal levels after reopening, Brent price in Q4 2027 will reach $110/barrel.

Goldman Sachs warns that if sluggish flows keep the market focused on long-term disruption risks, Brent crude oil prices are very likely to surpass the historical peak of 2008. Historical data shows that four years after the five largest supply shocks, average production in the affected countries remains over 40% below normal levels. Considering that about 25% of production in the Persian Gulf region comes from offshore operations, the engineering complexity means that the recovery cycle for capacity will be extremely long.

The crisis in the natural gas (LNG) market cannot be ignored either.

European natural gas benchmark (TTF) prices have soared more than 90% to €61/MWh compared to pre-war levels. More critically, according to Qatar Energy CEO Saad Al-Kaabi, damage caused by Iranian missiles to the Ras Laffan LNG plant with a capacity of 77mtpa will lead to the shutdown of 17% of the country's LNG capacity in the next 2-3 years.

Goldman Sachs points out that if Qatari LNG output is halted for more than two months, TTF prices could approach €100/MWh. The anticipated "greatest LNG supply growth wave in history in 2027" is at significant risk of being delayed.

In the face of the crisis, the U.S. government has utilized multiple policy tools: coordinating the release of 172 million barrels from SPR (averaging about 1.4 million barrels per day), exempting oil from Russia and Venezuela from sanctions, and suspending the Jones Act for 60 days.

However, Alec Phillips, Goldman Sachs' chief political economist in the U.S., points out that U.S. SPR inventories have fallen below 60% of capacity and are expected to plunge to 33% by mid-year under current plans, limiting further release capacity. As for the oil export ban that the market is worried about, while "very likely," it is currently not a baseline assumption.

The market has only priced in "inflation," but not "recession"

The energy shock's consumption of the global macro economy is becoming evident. Goldman Sachs' senior global economist Joseph Briggs proposed a key "rule of thumb": for every 10% increase in oil prices, global GDP will decline by over 0.1%, and overall global inflation rate will rise by 0.2 percentage points (with some Asian countries and Europe being hit harder), and core inflation will rise by 0.03-0.06 percentage points.

Based on this calculation, the current three-week disruption has caused about a 0.3% drag on global GDP; if the disruption extends to 60 days, it will lead to a 0.9% decline in global GDP and a 1.7% increase in global prices. Additionally, since the outbreak of the war, the global Financial Conditions Index (FCI) has significantly tightened by 51 basis points, and the risk of economic stagnation is rapidly rising.

However, Kamakshya Trivedi, Goldman Sachs’ chief forex and emerging markets strategist, pointed out the most fatal vulnerability in the current global market pricing structure: the market has not accounted for the risk of "downward growth" at all.

Trivedi analyzed that global assets thus far have only treated this conflict as an "inflation shock." This is reflected in: the interest rate market experienced hawkish repricing (G10 and emerging market front-end yields surged sharply, with the most impacted being the UK and Hungary, which had previously priced in the most rate cut expectations); the foreign exchange market strictly diversified along the terms of trade (ToT) axis (the dollar strengthened, and currencies of energy-exporting countries such as Norway, Canada, and Brazil outperformed, while currencies of Eurasian importing countries came under pressure).

This pricing logic implies an extremely dangerous premise—the market firmly believes that the war is temporary (the downward-sloping oil and gas futures term structure also confirms this).

Trivedi warned that once this blind optimism is proven false, energy prices prove persistent, and the market will be forced to sharply downgrade pricing on global growth and corporate profits. At that time, "downward growth" will become the second shoe to drop. Under this recession trading logic:

1. Developed and emerging market stock markets that have performed relatively well so far will face massive selling pressure;
2. Cyclical assets like copper and the Australian dollar will be heavily sold off;
3. Hawkish pricing of front-end yields will reverse;
4. The Japanese yen (JPY) will replace the dollar as the ultimate safe-haven currency in an environment where both stocks and bonds are suffering.

The MENA region has already felt the economic winter. Goldman Sachs MENA economist Farouk Soussa estimates that Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries are losing about $700 million daily from oil revenue alone, and if the disruption lasts for two months, total losses will approach $80 billion. The decline in non-oil GDP in Oman, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other countries may even surpass levels seen during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Under capital flight and the pressures of safe-haven sentiment, the Egyptian pound (EGP) has become the worst-performing frontier market currency since the outbreak of the war.

Conclusion

The core variable of this epic crisis is no longer the firepower unleashed by the U.S. military, but rather the timetable for navigation through the Strait of Hormuz.

Despite Trump and his cabinet officials (such as Energy Secretary Wright) frequently sending optimistic signals to the market that the war will end in "a few weeks," Goldman Sachs believes that Iran's survival game logic, the U.S. political dilemma constrained by control over the Strait, the natural ceiling on escort capabilities, and the absence of conditions for mediation—all point to a possibility: the duration of the disruption will be longer than the "few weeks" currently implied by market pricing.

Once this expectation is revised, investors will face not merely a continuation of "inflation trading," but a shift to "recession trading." In Trivedi's words, downward growth could be the next shoe to drop.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。