This Los Angeles port is among the first casualties of Trump's trade war

[Zorro]

Empty berths and idle cranes show the effects of sky-high tariffs on Chinese goods.

On a sunny spring morning, when the Port of Los Angeles should be a blur of activity, more than half of the container ship berths here sit empty. The steel booms on dozens of towering ship-to-shore cranes point idly to the sky.

These are the front lines of President Donald Trump’s trade war.

The number of shipping containers that arrived at the nation’s top container port last week was roughly one-third lower than during the same period last year — a sharper decline than during the depths of the Great Recession. More than one-fifth of the giant ships that were scheduled to call in Los Angeles this month have already canceled, and that number is expected to rise.

Trump’s 145 percent tariffs on Chinese goods — and Beijing’s triple-digit retaliation — are bringing a swift halt to the trans-Pacific flow of electronics, clothing, furniture, industrial parts and everything else that the world’s two largest economies exchange.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/05/11/los-angeles-port-tariffs-trade-tensions/

[peacebuzzard]

1. Thanks for the report; sounds like the recession domino fall is starting up

And it will influence many industries;
The demand for services and products will start withering away.

[Warpy]

5. Officials are meeting with the Chinese and backpedaling as fast as they can

since it's obvious King Chubbo's weenie wagging contest with Xi has backfired bigly, more so in our direction than theirs.

Now if we can just get the stupid fucker to stop being such an arse to everybody else, especially Canada and Mexico.'

[littlemissmartypants]

2. They were sending...

Empty containers back to mock us. They just created meaningless work and prolonged the agony.

Now, they are sending those containers filled with goods to other markets in the world. They don't need us anymore.

ETTD

❤️ RESIST!! ✊️

[LogDog75]

3. No many ships according to marinetraffic.com

A couple of months ago, the Port of Los Angles had dozens of ships waiting for a berth. Today, I counted only 12. All that traffic before our idiot president's tariffs meant a lot of work for people at the port. Their paychecks were spent in the LA area boosting the economy providing even more jobs. Now, many of those Port of LA will be laid off or fired. Meanwhile, the products the American consumers need and want are going to become scarce and will cost more. Meanwhile, prices will increase to pay the tariffs and because there is a small supply prices will increase even more.

Trumpeconomics, causing pain for everyone except the billionaire oligarchs.

[3Hotdogs]

4. Well, at least there will be less pollution generated.

[markodochartaigh]

6. Ironically,

some of those emissions, like the sulfur in ship fuel, generate atmospheric particles which reflect solar radiation. There are many facets to our current environmental predicament.
https://phys.org/news/2024-05-sulfur-content-shipping-fuel-maritime.html

[Wounded Bear]

7. Seattle has been like that for over a week...