Fallout From Iran War and Oil Shock Deliver Another Blow to World Economy

Bombs are exploding in Iran and the Middle East, but the fallout is rattling households and businesses in neighborhoods all over the globe.In Kansas, home buyers saw 30-year mortgage rates edge above 6 percent this week.In Western India, families mourning the death of a loved one discovered that gas-fired crematories had been temporarily closed.In Hanoi, Vietnam, gas station owners posted “sold out” signs.

In Kenya, tea growers and traders worried their exports to Iran would rot on the dock.And across the United States, Canada, Europe, Britain and Mexico, farmers blanched at the surge in fertilizer costs.The widening war in Iran has delivered a stunning punch to a worldwide economy that has already been walloped by a breakdown of the international trading order, war in Ukraine and President Trump’s chaotic policymaking.“This really is the big one,” David Goldwyn, a former U.S.

diplomat and U.S.Energy Department official, said of the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important choke point for oil.

It is the emergency scenario everyone feared, he said....