Trump’s unforced error
From Tacoma, Washington, to Huntington Beach, California, all along the west coast of the United States, residents are noticing something odd. Fewer container ships are running, and those that are running are running half full, or entirely empty.
The phenomenon began in mid-April. People started noticing a scary decline in the number of cargo vessels then. Now they’re starting to wonder how it’s going to affect them personally.
Well I’ve got some bad news for them. Not only is it going to affect them, it’s going to affect everyone. “One of my fears is that the local trucking community is going to be the first to be impacted by these changes” in cargo volumes, said Jeff Bellerud, chief operating officer at the Northwest Seaport Alliance, which oversees marine cargo operations at both ports.
Ah yes, the truckers, among the biggest consumers of right-wing podcasts. I wonder what they’re going to think. Also bracing for what could be a substantial decline in work are the longshoremen who handle cargo. These are the leading indicators, the people who are going to suffer first.
Next in line is everyone else. Many small businesses that rely on income from the sale of items shipped from China, businesses that rely on a steady stream of trade, will simply cease to exist. They can’t afford to miss a paycheck.
As with Covid, many of them are going to be gone, never to return. This time it’s going to be worse than Covid. This time supplies won’t be slowed down, this time they will stop altogether. And on and on and on, like dominos falling one after another.
It’s going to take a while. The reason it hasn’t impacted the amount of plastic crap you see on the shelves at Walmart yet is because of a thing called “forward buying.” Beginning last summer, many US companies started importing extra inventory or shipping extra products overseas out of concern that then-candidate Trump would win reelection and make good on his campaign threat of high tariffs.
Well he won reelection and the tariffs came. This is practical proof that tariffs don’t work. No matter how much Trump and his pirate ship of thugs bleat to the contrary, tariffs are going to ruin the American economy, and they will do it in a way that will take billions of dollars and many years to recover.
But would you like to know an even stronger indicator that tariffs are going to ruin the economy and Trump and his goons know this? Trump’s own officials and staffers are stockpiling basic goods, like toilet paper, in anticipation of the supply chain shocks and increased prices brought on by Trump’s idiotic tariffs. Despite what these assholes are telling you, people like Karoline Leavitt and Howard Lutnick are lying — and they know it. They’re stockpiling stuff too.
It’s Trump’s unforced error. Nobody benefits and everybody but the millionaires and billionaires suffer. Meanwhile, as the little guys and gals pay the price for Trump’s lunacy, Trump, the world’s biggest man-baby bastard is planning a hundred million dollar military parade to stroke his giant ego, bought and paid for by the same people he’s putting out of business. And many of those morons still adore him.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.