Scott Bessent posted on Thursday evening that the European Union had joined Operation Economic Outcast, praising the bloc’s strong and early stance and declaring that the world was sending a clear message to Tehran. The European Commission statement he was referring to, published on August 31 as G20 finance ministers gathered in Asheville, does not say that.

It welcomes the American campaign, restates the bloc’s longstanding complaints about Iranian conduct, and expresses support for efforts to halt destabilising activities and resume peace talks. It does not formally commit the European Union to anything.

Global energy trade spent forty years being optimised. Routes were shortened, cargo sizes maximised, inventories minimised, and suppliers concentrated wherever volume was largest and voyages shortest. The result was a system of extraordinary efficiency that assumed one thing: that the waterways would stay open. Six months of war have demonstrated otherwise, and the response has been a deliberate de-optimisation of the entire map.

Japan illustrates it most starkly because it started from the most concentrated position. Until February the world’s fifth-largest oil buyer sourced over 90 percent of its crude from the Middle East, and by some measures 94 to 95 percent, delivered to coastal refineries on a straightforward 21-day voyage.

Chinese emissions have declined before. Every previous instance had the same cause: less coal. The second quarter of 2026 broke that pattern. Carbon dioxide emissions fell 1 percent year on year while coal-fired power generation rose, and the decline happened anyway because oil consumption dropped 9 percent overall and 16 percent in transport. This has been identified as the first time a fall in oil use alone has been sufficient to pull Chinese emissions down.

The mechanism is worth setting out carefully because it inverts the usual assumption about how a fuel shock affects emissions. Higher prices normally cut emissions by cutting activity: people drive less, factories run slower, the economy contracts. That is not what happened.