https://newrepublic.com/article/194655/trump-recession-begun-shipping-tariffs
Trump’s Recession Has Begun
It’s already in Seattle. It will now travel east.
This is how the recession begins. In Seattle, cargo shipments are
down 60 percent. Los Angeles will be next. As recently as November, the
Los Angeles Times reported that cargo traffic at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach
reached record highs. But last week,
it quoted the port’s executive director, Gene Seroka, predicting that “in two weeks’ time, arrivals will drop by 35 percent.” The reason, Seroka said, was that “essentially all shipments out of China for major retailers and manufacturers have ceased, and cargo coming out of Southeast Asia locations is much softer than normal.”
The recession will make its way east from Seattle and Los Angeles as trucks and freight trains carry less cargo overland. The port of New York–New Jersey, which is less reliant on China, is doing pretty well for now, which is good because transportation, warehousing, and storage account for
more than 17 percent of all jobs in the Garden State. But Lisa Yakomin, head of the Association of Bi-State Motor Carriers,
told the
Bergen Record, “It’s a wait and see situation for the trucking community.”
If you think the sole benchmark for a healthy economy is a drop in imports, then I guess you can call a major-port ghost town good news, except about 200,000 jobs depend on the port
not being a ghost town, and anyway a catastrophic falloff in imports was never going to make American factories bloom overnight, or possibly ever. According to the Business Roundtable, a lobby group for chief executives,
one in five jobs in the U.S. is dependent on trade. The Retail Industry Leaders Association puts it more conservatively at
one in 10 jobs, but that’s still a lot.
A recession occurs when there are two consecutive quarters of negative growth. The Commerce Department
reported Wednesday that gross domestic product shrank 0.3 percent in the first quarter. Ordinarily, one might legitimately question whether a new president should be held responsible for the economy’s performance during his first two and a half months in office. But Trump broadcast his intention to slap tariffs on everything that moves before and after the election, and he just completed a very busy first 100 days.
Biggest, most beautiful recession incoming, bigly. Can't wait.
