SAN PEDRO: At the Port of Los Angeles, the frenetic choreography of cranes unloading containers from Asia has slowed to a tiptoe, and the noise of the busiest docks in the US is quieting.
\n\u201cYou could hear a pin drop, it\u2019s very unusual,\u201d Port Director Gene Seroka told AFP.
\nBy this unofficial barometer, the American economy faces slowdown under US President Donald Trump amid his trade war with China.
\nAlong with the next-door Port of Long Beach, the area represents the biggest gateway in the United States for goods from China and the rest of Asia.
\nThat has made it among the first victims to a burgeoning crisis threatening to disrupt the lives of millions of Americans.
\nTrump\u2019s on-again-off-again tariffs \u2014 and the retaliation launched by other countries \u2014 has cowed importers, whose usual orders for furniture, toys, and clothing have dwindled.
\nFor the week of May 4, the Port of Los Angeles will receive up to 35 percent less cargo compared with the same period last year, Seroka said.
\nThe Port of Long Beach says for the entire month of May it is expecting a 30 percent drop in imports.
\nDozens of ships have canceled their voyages to these ports.
\n\u201cMany retailers and manufacturers alike have hit the pause button, stopping all shipments from China,\u201d said Seroka.
\nThe Asian manufacturing giant is the hardest hit by Trump\u2019s tariffs, with levies as high as 145 percent on some goods. Sales of Chinese goods to the US last year totaled more than $500 billion, according to Beijing.
\nAnd while sales may not be going up this year, prices undoubtedly will.
\n\u201cEffectively, the cost of a product made in China now is two and a half times more expensive than it was just last month,\u201d said Seroka.
\nTrump last month announced a range of differing tariffs against nearly all countries in the world \u2014 including an island populated mostly by penguins \u2014 using a formula that baffled economists.
\nHe reversed course a few days later and left a blanket 10 percent rate against most of the planet.
\nThat extra cost, which is paid by the importer of a product, not by the seller, will affect trade across the United States.
\n\u201cThis is not just a West Coast issue,\u201d warned Long Beach Port Director Mario Cordero.
\n\u201cIt affects every port, whether it\u2019s in the East or in the Gulf\u201d of Mexico, which Trump has decreed should be known as the Gulf of America.
\nAt the start of the year, Long Beach and Los Angeles saw American companies scurry to get ahead of tariffs that Trump promised on the campaign trail.
\nCargo volumes surged as they tried to build up as much untaxed inventory as possible.
\nBut as the tariffs begin to bite, they will undoubtedly hold buying to eat into that inventory.
\nWithout a reversal from the White House that would re-open the trade spigot, that could mean shortages that consumers will start to notice, and soon, according to Seroka.
\n\u201cAmerican importers, especially in the retail sector, are telling me that they have about five to seven weeks of normal inventory on hand today,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cIf this trade dispute goes on for any length of time, we\u2019ll likely see fewer selections on store shelves and online buying platforms.
\n\u201cThe impact on American consumers will be less choice and higher prices,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cThe American consumer is going to get hit right in the wallet.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Antonio Montalbo, one of the 900,000 logistics workers in Southern California, the ordeal has already begun.
\nAs the owner of a small trucking company, he needs to replace the starter on one of his vehicles; the part, made in China, now costs twice as much.
\nTrump has \u201ccreated a hostile environment at the port for the drivers,\u201d says the 37-year-old.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re angry at Donald Trump. He needs to go check out the country a little bit, because he has a lot of angry truck drivers.
\n\u201cIt seems like he doesn\u2019t care about the public or the working class.\u201d
\nBetween skyrocketing maintenance costs and the fall-off in work, he estimates he could be laying off staff within six months.
\nMontalbo says he voted for Trump last November because he was fed up with inflation, and trusted him to fix the economy.
\n\u201cI thought that he was a businessman.
\n\u201cNow we have something worse than inflation, called tariffs.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SAN PEDRO: At the Port of Los Angeles, the frenetic choreography of cranes unloading containers from Asia has slowed to a tiptoe, and the noise of the busiest docks in the US is quieting. \u201cYou could hear a pin drop, it\u2019s very unusual,\u201d Port Director Gene Seroka told AFP. By this unofficial barometer, the American …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":80539,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80526"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80540,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80526\/revisions\/80540"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}