The US and Iran reached a deal over the weekend of 14 June 2026 to end the war that began on 28 February and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The strait is the Persian Gulf entrance that carries about a fifth of the world's seaborne oil. Markets moved first. Oil fell roughly 20 percent toward a three-month low and tanker stocks jumped. On 13 June the Joint Maritime Information Center, the coalition body that sets the region's threat level, cut its Hormuz assessment from "critical" to "severe". If you import from China, the part that matters is what the deal does to your freight bill, and it does less than the headline suggests, and later.
Why the surcharges outlast the ceasefire
The strait closed within 48 hours of the first strikes in late February, and carriers rerouted Asia cargo the long way around southern Africa, which pulled capacity out of the system and lifted rates on lanes far from the Gulf. Drewry's World Container Index for a 40-foot box ran at 3,344 US dollars on 4 June against 1,899 on 26 February. The freight-pricing platform Xeneta measured June spot rates against pre-conflict levels at 75 percent higher from China to the US East Coast, 51 percent higher to North Europe, and 45 percent to the Mediterranean. The cost reached you mostly through surcharges rather than base rates. Hapag-Lloyd added a war-risk surcharge of 1,500 US dollars per container and 3,500 for reefers, CMA CGM set an emergency conflict surcharge of 2,000, and Maersk filed an emergency bunker surcharge near 200 per container. A signing ceremony does not delete a surcharge line already printed on your invoice.
Watch the insurance, not the news
Container traffic froze even after the shooting paused because the real gate is insurance. War-risk premiums for a Hormuz transit rose to roughly 4,000 times their pre-crisis level, near 4 percent of a ship's value for a seven-day policy against about 0.001 percent before the war. Lloyd's syndicates, which write more than a third of the world's war-risk cover, suspended or repriced the region. Around 600 ships sat stuck in the Gulf in mid-June, and analyst Peter Sand at Xeneta counted roughly 10 container ships trapped inside it. The backlog clears unevenly. Kamco Invest expects fees to stay elevated for two to three months after the route fully reopens. The number that tells you when relief is real is the war-risk premium. If it falls from 4,000 times toward 50 or 100 times in the weeks after the deal signs, the queue clears and rates normalize. If it holds, so do your surcharges.
What this changes for your next shipment
The wrong move now is to lock a long fixed rate in relief, or to assume your quote drops the day the deal signs. Ask your carrier or forwarder, in writing, which surcharges sit on your specific booking, what each one is called, and the condition that removes it. War-risk, emergency conflict, and emergency bunker lines each lift on their own trigger rather than on a press release. Keep freight contracts short while the premiums stay high, and price the current surcharge into your landed cost instead of the number you hope to pay next month. A separate bunker adjustment is due on Asia to Europe sailings on 1 July, so a July booking can pick up a new fuel line even as the war-risk one starts to ease. This is the same volatility we tracked when China-to-US rates doubled since February and when China-to-Europe rates climbed early in the year. The direction reverses now. The visibility problem does not.
Freight is where a China order quietly loses its margin, because the surcharge that lands the goods is set after the price is agreed. The same Hormuz disruption already fed into rising factory-gate costs before a box ever moved. If you cannot see which lines sit on your booking or when they come off, that is the gap to close first. An agent coordinating your shipment can pin the carrier on the exact surcharge schedule for your lane before you commit, so you ship on a cost you can actually see.
Sources: AInvest, "The Real Bottleneck at Hormuz Isn't War, It's Insurance," 15 June 2026 (US-Iran deal wording agreed 12 June; JMIC cut Hormuz threat from "critical" to "severe" on 13 June; ~600 ships stuck; war-risk premiums ~4,000x pre-crisis); The National, "Ships face 4,000-times higher insurance costs to cross Strait of Hormuz," 3 June 2026 (Xeneta spot-rate increases vs pre-conflict; ~10 container ships trapped; Kamco Invest two-to-three-month backlog); The Deep Dive, "Maersk Says Hormuz Conflict Costs Top $500M a Month," 3 June 2026 (Hapag-Lloyd, CMA CGM and Maersk surcharge figures; strait closed within 48 hours of 28 February strikes).