Original Author: Gao Zhimou
Original Source: Wall Street News
In its latest flagship macro report "Top of Mind" released on March 20, Goldman Sachs warned that global assets have only fully priced in the "inflation shock" while completely ignoring the devastating impact of high energy costs on global economic growth.
The report stated that the "deadlock" in the Strait of Hormuz means the war is extremely difficult to end in the short term. Once market expectations are proven wrong, "growth downturn (recession)" will be the second shoe to drop, and global asset pricing will then face an extremely violent reversal.
Based on the risk of the crisis becoming prolonged, Goldman Sachs has comprehensively lowered its 2026 growth forecasts for major economies such as the US and the Eurozone, raised inflation expectations, and significantly postponed the next Fed rate cut from June to September.
It is worth mentioning that, according to a CCTV News report on March 22, Iran's representative to the International Maritime Organization stated that Iran allows non-"enemy" ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, but they need to coordinate with Iran on security issues and make relevant arrangements.
Why is a Quick Victory Hard to Achieve? The "Deadlock" of the Strait of Hormuz and the Escort Illusion
Goldman Sachs believes that the core suspense of this conflict lies not in whether the US military can achieve tactical victory, but in when the "global energy chokehold" of the Strait of Hormuz can be unlocked.
In the report, former US Fifth Fleet Commander Donegan cited detailed data to confirm the military superiority of the US and Israel.
However, military superiority cannot translate into an end to the war.
Chatham House Middle East Program Director Vakil believes that Iran sees this conflict as a "war of survival." Iran learned a lesson from the "Twelve-Day War" in June 2025—when it conceded too early and exposed its weakness.
Therefore, Iran's current strategy is to use low-cost asymmetric weapons like drones to fight a protracted war, spreading the cost as widely as possible until it obtains security guarantees (including substantial sanctions relief) that ensure the Islamic Republic's long-term survival. Vakil emphasized:
"Iran has no motivation to end this war until it sees a reliable path to these guarantees."
Furthermore, Iran's command structure is far 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 institutional system is still functioning effectively.
Former US Middle East Envoy Ambassador Dennis Ross revealed another deadlock from Washington's perspective: If it weren't for Iran's control of 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 exports oil and who sails through the Strait, he cannot declare victory and stop."
Ross believes that, given the US military's inability to seize coastal territory along the Strait, mediation facilitated by Russian President Putin might be the fastest way to break the deadlock. However, the conditions for mediation are not currently in place, especially since the key figure on the Iranian side most capable of coordinating various factions (including the IRGC)—former parliament speaker Ali Larijani—was recently killed. This leadership vacuum significantly reduces the probability of reaching a peace agreement in the short term.
So, can military escorts break the physical supply disruption僵局? Donegan's answer is extremely cold: capable of escorting, but lacking the capacity to restore normal flow.
Although the US and its allies (UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, etc.) have stated their readiness to participate in escort operations and have been conducting related military exercises for the past 15 years, Donegan emphasized that the escort model inherently lacks economies of scale.
He assessed that military escorts could at most restore only 20% of normal oil flow, plus an additional 15-20% from overland pipelines, leaving a huge gap from normal levels. Restoring supply is not like flipping a "switch"; the ultimate主动权 lies with Iran—
"This is not purely a military problem, but a game of各方动机 and leverage."
Unprecedented Energy Supply Disruption—Oil Prices Could Break 2008's Historical High
Data from Goldman Sachs' commodities team quantifies the historic scale of this shock: the estimated current loss of Persian Gulf oil flow is as high as 17.6 million barrels per day (bpd), accounting for 17% of global supply, a scale 18 times the peak disruption of Russian oil in April 2022. The actual flow through the Strait of Hormuz has plummeted by 97% from the normal 20 million bpd to just 600,000 bpd.
Although some crude oil is being rerouted via the Saudi East-West Pipeline (to Yanbu Port) and the UAE's Habshan-Fujairah pipeline, Goldman Sachs estimates that the net redirection capacity上限 of these two pipelines is only 1.8 million bpd, a drop in the bucket.
Based on this, Goldman Sachs constructed three medium-term oil price scenarios:
- Scenario 1 (Most Optimistic: Return to pre-war flow within one month): Forecasts Q4 2026 Brent crude average price at $71/barrel. Global commercial inventories would suffer a 6% (617 million barrels) hit. IEA member releases of Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR) and absorption of Russian waterborne crude could offset about 50% of the缺口.
- Scenario 2 (Disruption lasts 60 days until April 28): Forecasts Q4 2026 Brent average price would soar to $93/barrel. The inventory hit would expand to nearly 20% (1.816 billion barrels), with policy responses able to offset only about 30%.
- Scenario 3 (Extreme: 60-day disruption叠加 long-term Middle East capacity damage): If post-reopening Middle East production remains 2 million bpd below normal levels, Brent oil price would reach $110/barrel in Q4 2027.
Goldman Sachs warns that if the低迷 flow keeps the market focused on long-term disruption risks, Brent crude is highly likely to break through the historical high set in 2008. Historical data shows that four years after the five largest supply shocks in the past, production in affected countries remained on average, more than 40% below normal levels. Given that about 25% of the Persian Gulf region's production comes from offshore operations, the engineering complexity implies an extremely lengthy capacity repair cycle.
The crisis in the natural gas (LNG) market is equally不容忽视.
The European gas benchmark (TTF) price has surged over 90% since before the war to €61/MWh. More critically, according to confirmation by QatarEnergy CEO Saad Al-Kaabi, damage caused by Iranian missiles to the 77 mtpa Ras Laffan LNG plant will result in 17% of the country's LNG capacity being shut down for the next 2-3 years.
Goldman Sachs points out that if Qatari LNG production is halted for more than two months, TTF prices could approach €100/MWh. The "largest ever wave of LNG supply growth in 2027" previously anticipated by Goldman Sachs now faces the risk of significant delay.
In response to the crisis, the US government has deployed multiple policy tools: coordinating the release of 172 million barrels of SPR (averaging about 1.4 million bpd), exempting sanctions on Russian and Venezuelan oil, and suspending the Jones Act for 60 days.
But Goldman Sachs US Chief Political Economist Alec Phillips notes that US SPR inventory is already below 60% of capacity and is projected to plummet to 33% by mid-year under existing plans, limiting further release space. As for the crude export ban feared by the market, while "very possible," it is not currently a base-case assumption.
Markets Have Only Priced in "Inflation," Not Yet "Recession"
The吞噬 of the energy shock on the global macroeconomy is becoming apparent. Goldman Sachs Senior Global Economist Joseph Briggs proposed a key "rule of thumb": A 10% increase in oil prices will reduce global GDP by over 0.1% and increase the global headline inflation rate by 0.2 percentage points (with some Asian countries and Europe being hit harder), while core inflation rises by 0.03-0.06 percentage points.
Based on this calculation, the current three-week disruption has already dragged down global GDP by about 0.3%; if the disruption extends to 60 days, it would lead to a 0.9% decline in global GDP and push up global prices by 1.7%. Combined with the significant tightening of the global Financial Conditions Index (FCI) by 51 basis points since the war began, the risk of economic失速 is rising sharply.
However, Goldman Sachs Chief Foreign Exchange and Emerging Market Strategist Kamakshya Trivedi pinpointed the most致命脆弱性 in the current global market pricing structure: the market has not priced in the risk of "growth downturn" at all.
Trivedi分析称 that global assets have so far only traded this conflict as an "inflation shock." This is evident in: the利率市场 undergoing a hawkish repricing (sharp rises in front-end yields in G10 and emerging markets, with the UK and Hungary, which had priced in the most rate cuts, reacting most violently); the外汇市场 strictly differentiating along the Terms of Trade (ToT) axis (USD strengthening, energy exporter currencies like Norway, Canada, and Brazil outperforming, while European and Asian importer currencies underperforming).
This pricing logic implies an极其危险的前提—the market firmly believes the war will be short-lived (the downward-sloping term structure of oil and gas futures also confirms this).
Trivedi warns that once this blind optimism is proven wrong, and energy prices prove to be persistent, the market will be forced to violently reprice global growth and corporate earnings downward. At that time, "growth downturn" will become the second shoe to drop. Under this recession trading logic:
- Developed market and emerging market equities, which have held relatively firm so far, will face huge selling pressure;
- Pro-cyclical assets like copper and the Australian dollar will be猛烈抛售;
- The hawkish pricing of front-end yields will reverse;
- The Japanese Yen (JPY) will replace the US dollar as the ultimate safe-haven currency in an environment of stock and bond sell-offs.
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has already begun to feel the economic winter. Goldman Sachs MENA economist Farouk Soussa calculated that Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries are losing about $700 million per day in oil revenue alone; a two-month disruption would bring total losses close to $80 billion. The decline in non-oil GDP for countries like Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait could even exceed the levels seen during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Amid capital flight and避险情绪踩踏, the Egyptian Pound (EGP) has become the worst-performing frontier market currency since the war began.
Conclusion
The core variable of this epic crisis is no longer the US military's firepower, but the navigation timetable of the Strait of Hormuz.
Although Trump and his senior cabinet officials (like Energy Secretary Wright) have recently frequently sent optimistic signals to the market suggesting the war will end in "a few weeks," Goldman Sachs believes that Iran's survival博弈 logic, the US's political困境 constrained by Strait control, the natural天花板 of escort capacity, and the lack of mediation conditions—all point to one possibility: the duration of the disruption will be longer than the "few weeks"隐含 in current market pricing.
Once this expectation is修正, investors will face not just a continuation of "inflation trading," but a switch to "recession trading." In Trivedi's words, growth downturn could be the next shoe to drop.
