This is ground zero in Trump's trade war

Boston Globe

21-06-2025

The Port of Los Angeles, along with a nearby facility in Long Beach, makes up a shipping complex that stretches across nearly 75 miles of Southern California shoreline. The ports are a bellwether for trade and the U.S. economy. Together, they move an astonishing 40% of the goods that come into the United States via containers. They also account for 30% of what the country exports.
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As Trump's chaotic and aggressive tariff strategy has seesawed this year, activity here has, too. That has threatened the livelihood of the roughly 100,000 workers at the port complex and complicated life for the hundreds of thousands of companies that bring goods through the port each year. The trends at the port hint at the pain that will ripple through the broader economy in the coming months as fewer and higher-priced goods travel from ports and warehouses to U.S. stores and consumers.
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The ports experienced a surge of activity this year when shippers rushed to bring in goods before tariffs that reached their highest levels in a century. That rush has faded, and trade has become more sluggish. With higher tariffs set to snap back within weeks, importers and port workers remain cautious, unsure of what their futures will hold.
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Most arrivals to the Southern California ports come from China. After Trump ratcheted up tariffs on Chinese goods to at least 145% in April, many shipments between the world's two largest economies came to a halt.
From March to April, U.S. imports and the trade deficit plummeted by the biggest volume on record. In the roughly four weeks that the 145% tariffs were in effect, future bookings to send shipping containers from China to the United States plunged by half from a year earlier, according to data from Vizion and Dun & Bradstreet, which track global shipping activity.
In May, Chinese exports to the United States were down roughly 35% from a year earlier, the biggest drop in decades apart from the pandemic. For the Port of Los Angeles in particular, May was the slowest month in more than two years.
Now the port is preparing for another uptick in traffic, a delayed reaction after the president paused some levies in April so he could negotiate new trade deals. Bookings have since rebounded modestly, especially after an agreement in early May between the United States and China to reduce some of the tariffs they specifically targeted against each other.
The surges and crashes are lowering the supply of certain goods. They are also pushing up the costs for companies to import goods. The cost of shipping a container to Southern California from China has doubled since the start of March, according to data from Freightos, a shipping marketplace, as importers try to find space on vessels in case tariffs increase.
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For some economists, these compounding forces hold ominous implications.
While inflation this year has stayed relatively steady so far, economists say the higher cost for imports could filter more noticeably into prices in stores later this year. Consumer demand could also weaken, a reaction in part to rash purchasing in the early months of 2025 before tariffs took effect. Companies and people rushed to buy machinery and cars, furniture and computers, meaning they could most likely spend less later this year.
Mark Zandi, the chief economist of Moody's Analytics, said the tariffs posed a 'very significant threat to the economy' that would become visible in the next few months.
'The hit to the economy is dead ahead,' he said. 'We haven't dodged that bullet.'
The ports are an illustration of the effects of globalization that Trump criticizes. As factories moved abroad over decades, particularly to China, the ports formed one end of a busy ocean superhighway.
Most of that traffic flows in one direction. For every four containers that arrive stuffed with foreign cars, textiles and toys, only one is sent out filled with corn, soybeans and other U.S. exports. The other three containers often return empty -- evidence of the trade deficit that the president rails against.
Trump has used tariffs to try to force Americans to buy more domestically made goods instead. The problem, critics say, is that this strategy threatens many jobs that Americans hold now, which are dependent on trade, without much indication that manufacturing could thrive again in the United States.
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Only 8% of Americans work in manufacturing, down from 22% in 1980. Since Trump has returned to office and adopted protectionist policies, the number of manufacturing jobs is still roughly flat, according to the Labor Department.
In fact, spending on the construction of new factories has slumped in recent months.
'Maybe it's a worthwhile goal to incentivize manufacturing jobs, but the way that we're going about it is putting a lot of other jobs at risk,' said Mario Cordero, the CEO of the Port of Long Beach. The days of U.S. manufacturing dominance, he added, are 'long gone.'
Today, the ports are an economic engine in their own right, supporting the communities that blanket the rolling coastal hills leading down to San Pedro Bay.
Across Southern California, port officials estimate, 1 million jobs are tied to the port, including truckers, warehouse workers, manufacturers and freight forwarders. Their jobs now hinge on the terms of trade set by the president.
On the recent Thursday, the effects of the tariffs were evident in the union hiring hall across the channel from the Port of Los Angeles where dockworkers go each morning to claim new assignments. The screens displaying jobs for daily workers showed about 40% fewer positions than normal.
Some truckers say tariffs have already hammered their business.
Erick Gordon, the vice president of Redefined Transportation, a trucking business based in Long Beach, said he was moving roughly half the number of containers that he did last year. In response, his company had lowered its rates, pushed harder to get new business and let half its drivers go. He has had to sink money into his business just to hang on for now.
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'They're almost killing the industry,' he said. 'It's survival mode.'
The last time the United States raised tariffs so high was nearly a century ago, when Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in 1930. The move was meant to protect U.S. businesses during the Great Depression.
It instead instigated a global trade war and deepened the economic crisis. Within two years, imports fell 40%. It took years for trade to recover.
The Port of Los Angeles was founded two decades before, in 1907, and it blossomed because of its connection to major railroads.
In the 1960s, the advent of the shipping container and the growth of factories in Asia began to transform the port. By the end of the 1980s, the Port of Los Angeles had eclipsed the ports of New York and New Jersey as the country's largest.
After China's entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, Chinese factories and the port grew in tandem. Now 45% of the port's business is connected to China, followed by Japan, Vietnam, South Korea and Taiwan. It receives some of the world's largest container ships, stretching the length of four football fields and holding tens of thousands of steel containers.
Over the last decade, the ports have undergone a crash course in dealing with disruption. They say it has helped them in the current moment.
Trump's trade war against China during his first term hit the ports hard. Shipments from China dropped sharply, though traffic from some other countries, like Vietnam, grew double digits.
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With the onset of the pandemic, factories shuttered in China, and imports plunged again. Then the ports experienced an uptick as Americans stuck at home began mass ordering exercise equipment, office furniture, toys and video games.
Jon Poelma, the managing director of APM Terminals, which is part of the Port of Los Angeles, said the pandemic had taught the port lessons about handling the shortages and surges it was seeing now, including how to maximize space when the port is overcrowded and better share information to speed up the flow of cargo.
'We got used to it,' he said. 'We tested our ability to handle pain.'
Last month, dozens of semi trucks and self-driving straddle carriers were buzzing around the terminal, stacking pink, white, blue and gray containers. Hulking blue container ships stained with rust rose up behind the stacks.
The part of the port that Poelma runs -- the biggest container terminal in the Western Hemisphere -- was emptier than in previous weeks. But it was still performing well compared with last year, in part because of its partnership with a major shipping alliance used by big retailers that have continued to bring in shipments when smaller companies have not.
Poelma admitted that most importers were having trouble trying to figure out how to forecast demand. And he did not see those challenges abating anytime soon.
'The one thing that is certain is that it continues to be very uncertain,' he said.
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