logo
First Chinese goods hit with 145%-plus tariffs arriving at U.S. ports

First Chinese goods hit with 145%-plus tariffs arriving at U.S. ports

CNBC09-05-2025

Upwards of 12,000 shipping containers that are subject to the 145%-plus tariffs levied by President Trump are on the first flotilla of Chinese freight vessels arriving at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
A total of seven vessels which left China after the announcement of the 145%-plus tariffs are currently at the nation's two busiest ports for container traffic from Asia, according to vessel arrivals tracked and aggregated by MarineTraffic. An additional five freight ships are expected to arrive in the coming days.
Amazon, Home Depot, Ikea, Ralph Lauren and Tractor Supply are among the companies with Chinese goods in these containers, spanning a wide range of consumer items.
In addition to housewares, apparel, and furniture, Amazon imported a wide variety of products on behalf of sellers, including refrigerators, deep fryers, mousepads, bookshelves and living room sofas.
Tractor Supply shipments include portable drum fans, garden tools, and men's work boots.
Lamps and ceiling fans have been processed through Customs for Home Depot.
A Tractor Supply spokesperson referred CNBC to its recent earnings call on April 24 when the company pointed to "notable uncertainty" as a results of the tariffs. "Tractor Supply is actively working with its vendor and supply chain partners to navigate the impact of recently announced tariffs, while also monitoring the broader macroeconomic factors impacting its customers," the spokesperson said.
Ikea furniture; Speedo swim goggles and swim caps; Procter & Gamble tissue holders; Samsung printed circuit boards, microwaves and refrigerator parts; Ralph Lauren sweaters, cashmere, and blazers; Dr. Martens Airwair footwear; Samsung microwaves and refrigerator parts; LG washing machines, air conditioners, ranges, refrigerators and dishwashers; Bauer Hockey sporting goods; Lenovo computer parts; auto parts for Valeo North America; and headsets and computer keyboards for Polaris, were all among the Chinese container goods.
For many of the companies, products categories deemed as essential to replenish are brought in despite concerns about consumer demand and an economic slowdown.
Amazon said in a statement sent by email that it is working with its "broad, varied range of valued selling partners in our store to support them in adapting to the evolving environment while maintaining broad selection and low prices for customers."
Home Depot is in a quiet period ahead of announcing its quarterly results, and referred CNBC to an existing statement citing "a fluid environment."
"We, together with our vendors, are monitoring developments and will work closely to manage with the goal of being our customers' advocate for value," a Home Depot spokesperson said.
Trump suggested on Friday ahead of key trade talks that he was willing to lower tariffs on China to 80%, a rate many businesses would likely still consider to be extremely high.
"80% Tariff on China seems right! Up to Scott B," Trump said in a Truth Social post, referring to a planned meeting between Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and counterparts from China in Switzerland this weekend.
Brian Bourke, global chief commercial officer at SEKO Logistics, tells CNBC clients continue to struggle in understanding how all of the various tariff provisions are stacked, or in some cases cancel each other out.
"This confusion has led them to continually alter and update their scenario planning, freezing any other decisions for the business they would be making," said Bourke. "Many of our clients priced and sold their products or projects prior to the tariff amounts being announced, and with the speed and severity as well as the quantity of new tariff provisions being announced, they are not able to change the pricing on items that have already sold and are arriving in May and June, or beyond."
The number of freight vessels and shipping containers headed to the U.S. from China has plummeted since the tariffs announcement in early April.
Across the Asia-North America West Coast and Asia-North America East Coast trades, there was a total of 90 blank sailings across April and May, according to Sea-Intelligence. The Ocean Alliance (a freight consortium including Chinese-owned and operated COSCO and OOCL, Taiwan-based Evergreen, and French-owned CMA) accounted for 48 of those canceled sailings.
Bookings are down from 30% to 50%, according to logistics providers and ocean carriers.
In addition to decreased vessel sailings as a result of paused manufacturing orders from shippers and fewer container to fill, ocean carriers are using smaller vessels to move trade. MSC, the largest ocean carrier in the world, along with the Gemini Alliance (comprised of Maersk and Hapag Lloyd), are among the freight companies using smaller vessels between the Asia-North America West Coast routes.
MSC has reduced its container capacity by 28% year over year, according to Sea-Intelligence data analyzing the impact of canceled sailings and vessel changes, while Ocean Alliance container capacity is down by 26% year over year.
Bourke said once shippers have finished bringing in what they consider essential stocks, they are in various degrees of "wait-and-see" mode with their supply chains, and continuing to cancel orders from China, which has led to widespread fears about product shortages and the potential for empty shelves. "What happens when safety stocks that had been built up disappear?" Bourke said.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

China Walks a Line in U.S. Trade Talks, Trying Not to Overplay Its Hand
China Walks a Line in U.S. Trade Talks, Trying Not to Overplay Its Hand

New York Times

time6 minutes ago

  • New York Times

China Walks a Line in U.S. Trade Talks, Trying Not to Overplay Its Hand

In its high-stakes trade talks with the United States, China has been trying to strike a balance in how it wields its market clout. It controls the world's supply of rare earth metals and magnets. And it has withheld supplies of the materials — crucial ingredients in everything from cars to fighter jets — as leverage. At the same time, Beijing knows it must not overplay its hand by pushing Washington so hard that the United States feels compelled to make the long-term investments needed to break its dependence on China. This delicate dynamic was underlined in an apparent compromise the countries reached on Tuesday in London. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said China's negotiators had agreed to resume sending rare earths to American companies. The Chinese government did not confirm this. But on Wednesday afternoon, the JL Mag Rare-Earth Company, a leading magnet producer in Ganzhou, China, said in a public disclosure that it had been issued licenses by China's Ministry of Commerce for sales of nonmilitary magnet exports to the United States, Europe and Southeast Asia. China has a long history of using government policy to control markets, periodically flooding countries with very low-priced Chinese supplies. That has driven many of China's overseas rare earth competitors out of business. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

'Coward' Elon Musk Mocked On His Own Platform After Bending The Knee To Trump
'Coward' Elon Musk Mocked On His Own Platform After Bending The Knee To Trump

Yahoo

time10 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

'Coward' Elon Musk Mocked On His Own Platform After Bending The Knee To Trump

Elon Musk went into damage-control mode early Wednesday as he tried to mend fences with President Donald Trump after their spectacular falling-out last week. And his critics are mocking his public show of fealty on his own platform. Musk spent some $291 million during the 2024 election cycle, most notably to help Trump, according to and became a constant presence by his side. Once in office, Trump put Musk in charge of the 'DOGE' initiative to cut government spending. But Musk left his role, attacked Trump's signature 'big beautiful bill' as a 'disgusting abomination,' and went scorched-earth against his one-time ally in a series of posts on X last week. Musk wrote that Trump won't release the files of late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein because the president is named in them, shared a post in support of impeaching Trump and replacing him with Vice President JD Vance, and floated the creation of a third political party. Trump in turn threatened repercussions for Musk's businesses and warned him of 'serious consequences' if he backed Democrats for office. But Musk blinked on Wednesday. He wrote that he regretted some of his posts about Trump and said some of them 'went too far.' He also deleted many of those messages. His critics fired back:

Nvidia Teams Up With Startup Mistral as Part of European AI Push
Nvidia Teams Up With Startup Mistral as Part of European AI Push

Yahoo

time10 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Nvidia Teams Up With Startup Mistral as Part of European AI Push

(Bloomberg) -- Nvidia Corp. announced a raft of projects aimed at bolstering artificial-intelligence infrastructure across Europe, including an expanded partnership with French startup Mistral AI. Trump's Military Parade Has Washington Bracing for Tanks and Weaponry NY Long Island Rail Service Resumes After Grand Central Fire NYC Mayoral Candidates All Agree on Building More Housing. But Where? Senator Calls for Closing Troubled ICE Detention Facility in New Mexico California Pitches Emergency Loans for LA, Local Transit Systems Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang made the announcements during a joint Nvidia-VivaTech event in Paris, part of a globe-trotting campaign to promote the adoption of AI and his company's products. A data center buildout is needed in Europe to help countries there catch up in deploying the technology, he said. The chipmaker is trying to expand the market for AI accelerators — the processors used to develop and run artificial intelligence models. Nvidia is pushing for countries to deploy technology on a national level and trying to make it easier for individual companies to get the benefits from AI. In France, Nvidia will team up with Mistral to use local AI computing to run the startup's services. An offering called Mistral Compute will tap 18,000 new Grace Blackwell chips from Nvidia. It will be developed in Mistral's data center in Essonne, France, and the company plans to roll it out to other locations in Europe. In the UK, AI firms Nebius Group and Nscale Global Holdings Ltd. will use 'thousands' of such semiconductors for their own platforms. Other countries, including Italy and Armenia, also are installing new hardware, Nvidia said. In Europe, Nvidia is working with 1.5 million developers and 9,600 businesses, as well as 7,000 startups in what the company calls its inception program. 'The only thing that's missing is infrastructure,' Dion Harris, Nvidia's director of data center and high-performance computing, said in a briefing ahead of the presentations. Nvidia is working with cloud and telecommunications companies across Europe, he said. Europe has lagged behind the US in developing the infrastructure for AI and hasn't matched the spending promised in other regions. Huang said at an event in London on Monday with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer that a lack of infrastructure was holding back growth in a country that otherwise had the expertise and startups to be a global competitor in AI. Huang said at the GTC-VivaTech event that more than 20 so-called AI factories are being planned and built across Europe in the next two years, with 'several' of them being 'gigafactories.' The larger facilities will be home to over 100,000 chips. It calculates that AI hardware capacity in Europe will grow by three times next year. 'We will increase the amount of AI computing capacity in Europe by a factor of 10,' he said. Santa Clara, California-based Nvidia has transformed its fortunes over the last three years and now gets almost as much revenue per quarter as Intel Corp., its longtime nemesis, gets in a year. Much of that money come from AI accelerator chips, which are used by a cadre of giant companies to develop AI software and services. That group, which includes Microsoft Corp. and Meta Platforms Inc., provides about half of Nvidia's total sales. The chipmaker is looking to reach a wider market by promoting the use of smaller-scale systems by companies and countries. Adding to a previous announcement, Nvidia said Inc.'s AWS, Mistral and others are joining the chipmaker's Lepton service, which helps connect AI developers with the computing hardware they need. Nvidia said that European countries need help to get AI models deployed that are based on local languages and data. It's providing software and services that will accelerate those efforts. Separately, Nvidia said that vehicles using its chips and software are starting to appear on the road — the result of years of work. Mercedes-Benz Group AG's CLA models and forthcoming vehicles from Volvo and Jaguar will rely on its Drive platform. --With assistance from Rachel Metz. New Grads Join Worst Entry-Level Job Market in Years The Spying Scandal Rocking the World of HR Software American Mid: Hampton Inn's Good-Enough Formula for World Domination Cavs Owner Dan Gilbert Wants to Donate His Billions—and Walk Again The SEC Pinned Its Hack on a Few Hapless Day Traders. The Full Story Is Far More Troubling ©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store