A container ship is shown at the Port of Los Angeles in Los Angeles, California, U.S. November 22, 2021.
Mike Blake | Reuters
Shipments from China to the West Coast of the U.S. will plummet next week as the impact of President Donald Trump‘s tariffs leads companies to cut their import orders.
Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, said Tuesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that he expects incoming cargo volume to slide by more than a third next week compared with the same period in 2024.
“According to our own port optimizer, which measures the loadings in Asia, we’ll be down just a little bit over 35% next week compared to last year. And it’s a precipitous drop in volume with a number of major American retailers stopping all shipments from China based on the tariffs,” Seroka said.
Shipments from China make up about 45% of the business for the Port of LA, though some transport companies will be looking to pick up goods at other points in Southeast Asia to try to fill up their ships, Seroka said.
“Realistically speaking, unti
26 Comments
duxup
It will be interesting to see if retailers choose raising prices or if they lean more towards … just not offering some things.
pelagic_sky
Seattle ports are currently empty, will be interesting to see if this holds true . https://seemorerocks.substack.com/p/port-of-seattle-empty-ze…
jqpabc123
The Trump "miracle" is working just as should have been expected from his long history of business success.
taylodl
This could get really ugly when the shelves start going empty. This may make the toilet paper incident seem quaint in comparison.
readthenotes1
IMO For impact on normal people's day-to-day life, the suspension of the de minimis rule that allowed boxes under $800 declared value (i.e., construction cost) to be imported with no tariff will have more of an impact than any other recent change.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/what-the-end-of-the-de-…
xnx
What's a good/authoritative site for tracking activity of US ports. This tells a little bit of the story: https://www.drewry.co.uk/supply-chain-advisors/supply-chain-…
Longer term trends would be nice.
trebligdivad
The youtuber 'What's going on with shipping?' has a good description in;
it includes pointers to loads of sites with the actual data.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GgcIuQ4X5k
xyst
What’s the data on exports as well? Some stories of farmers taking massive hits with demand that was only fulfilled by global market.
ramesh31
The port of Long Beach is the most mind blowing thing I have ever seen in my life. Hundreds of trucks stretching for miles, 24 hours a day. I would not wish that job on anyone… but the thought of it being empty is just terrifying.
dr_pardee
Knowing someone who imports from China, there are ways around tariffs
https://harris-sliwoski.com/chinalawblog/the-guide-for-legal…
https://www.npr.org/2025/03/07/nx-s1-5318785/tariff-dodging-…
Shady ways as well https://www.voanews.com/a/as-us-tariffs-expand-chinese-firms…
rtkwe
The general disruption could wind up blocking or delaying even goods that are still viable and profitable or simply only available from China under the tariffs simply because the ships themselves are only viable if they are fully loaded so they'll wind up not coming to the US for long gaps if the broader "reciprocal" tariffs stop other SEA traffic as well.
rayiner
Stopping the flow of Chinese products, often made with child or forced labor, is a good thing: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/reports/child-labor/list-o…. Weren’t we upset about the Uyghurs five minutes ago?
Trade with China is bad. It means a race to the bottom with a foreign country that doesn’t have our labor protections or environmental laws, and whose “comparative advantage” is cheaper labor. This was a widely accepted belief among the left until recently: https://youtu.be/kHRZnz5oHsE?si=A3QViVdPHISAP6qI. It’s insane to give up on beliefs-especially when you’re right—because you’re mad the “wrong people” have finally come around to agreeing with you!
What would the tariffs be if you made them only high enough to offset China’s looser regulation and cheaper labor? The current tariffs probably are in the same ballpark.
mstaoru
I'm moving internationally (from China to EU) and the quote is 2.5-3x higher than 3 months ago. Sea freight seems to be inspected at a much higher rate, and they don't recommend it, and air freight is more expensive because of much lower volume overall. Not a good time to ship your stuff. And that's when you think "I'm far away from the US and the madness does not concern me"…
jmyeet
There are two things I want people to remember:
1. The administration has absolutely no idea what they're doing. Don't be tempted to think this is part of some grand plan. Don't believe any narrative about how short-term pain was intentional. There's borderline or actual panic in the administration, going so far as to sideline Peter Navarro to get Trump to back down [1]; and
2. All of this is happening so the wealthiest 1000 people, who already pay almost no taxes, can pay slightly less in taxes. They've already started the rhetoric about tax cuts for average people based on the 2017 tax cuts for people below the top bracket expiring this year. The cut in the top bracket and the corporate tax rate cuts were permanent. So another likely temporary tax cut will be sold while giving away trillions to the wealthiest people on the planet.
[1]: https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-tariff-pause-navar…
ChrisArchitect
[dupe] More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43843821
guywithahat
Not too long ago I tried to raise money for a PCB assembly plant in the US, but couldn't raise the funding and got a "real job". Posts like these really make me wish I didn't give up lol
gonzo41
The Bloomberg podcast odd lots recently had an episode about this. Essentially, there's bubbles in the pipeline now. Expect Halloween and the shopping around that time to feature lots of scarcity.
dten
I found out yesterday that the port of LA has a free real-time dashboard (https://tower.portoptimizer.com/) so you can check the stats yourself. While it's interesting that next (week 19) shows a 35% drop YoY, the following week predicts a 25% increase from w19 and "only" 8.7% drop YoY.
danans
This Verge Decoder podcast interview with Flexport's CEO is a good take on the situation:
https://www.theverge.com/decoder-podcast-with-nilay-patel/64…
guywithahat
A surprising amount of LA's economy is just warehouses. This could have an interesting effect on the cost of housing in LA, which would have an effect on Phoenix, which has seen massive growth in warehouses as LA has gotten expensive
dfilppi
[dead]
spacedcowboy
Doesn't seem to be affecting prices much. My best quote for moving a household's belongings via container from US (California) to the UK (Northwest) is ~$26k including insurance (which is mandatory).
Schnitz
That’s what winning looks like!
relwin
Gamers Nexus essentially produced a 3-hr doc on how changing tariffs affect the US computer industry: "The Death of Affordable Computing | Tariffs Impact & Investigation" https://youtu.be/1W_mSOS1Qts?si=pBVt65SMqb1p-Zte . Best part is having a product manager show a spreadsheet of costs and margins and explain in real terms ($$$) what tariffs do to their business.
Kneedler
I was going to purchase a shipping container for my property in the US a few days ago, but the company I was talking with has raised their prices 70% over the quote I got 2-3 weeks prior.
hello_computer
good. we have too much shit. too much noise. i grew up without most of it, and life was fine. inb4 trump ballwasher: i’d applaud regardless of party or personality.