Port of Los Angeles says shipping volume will plummet 35% next week | Hacker News Reader

Port of Los Angeles says shipping volume will plummet 35% next week

cnbc.com

724 pointsperihelions643 comments

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.

I think its: https://volumes.portoptimizer.com/ ?

That number for w20 will probably change. For example, when https://youtu.be/2GgcIuQ4X5k?t=324 was produced w20 was predicted to be up 0.84% YoY.

This site is obviously a "hostile and political act" by the Port of LA.

Turns out reality itself is a hostile and political concept if your political leadership is incompetent enough.

That's why there's such a strong push towards "alternative facts"

"Reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Stephen Colbert

Could it be similar to weather forecasts where the further out the forecast goes the more it relies on seasonal averages?

I think two weeks is pretty much the low end of transit time for a container from China to US, so I wouldn't expect needing much modeling within that window.

Ships can be rerouted while in transit. I bet it is extremely unusual for a container ship, but we do live in interesting times.

Yeah I was wondering if those models try to smooth those bumps.

Week 9->10 2025 had a 35% drop too. And Week 9->10 2024 had a 45% drop and a 26% drop Week 16->17 2024.

Starting to wonder how significant this news really is?

That is Chinese New Year, it has always a very large drop. It's very impactful but expected and yearly.

My companies reporting needs to correct for it since the date shifts on western calendar and if would mess up all reporting otherwise, so yes, this is extremely significant.

Thank you for the details. I've no doubt that tariffs are having impacts. Was looking at that specific data and finding it hard to conclude with just that data. Does CNY also explain the Week 16->17 drop in 2024?

Chinese New Year falls between 21 January and 20 February. This would be somewhere between week 3 and week 8.

Some ISO 8601 week numbers for CNY:

2022 CNY fell on Feb 1 , which is Week 5

2023 CNY fell on Jan 22, which is Week 3

2024 CNY fell on Feb 10, which is Week 6

2025 CNY fell on Jan 29, which is Week 5

It’s sad that these posts of relevant facts - that are only presented as such, with no judgement - are being downvoted, apparently because they don’t supportive a narrative. One of the things I’ve always loved about Hacker News was how the community was so curious about truth. I guess all good things come to an end at some point.

I would love to have conversations with folks about the details and learn more about it. The CNY mention was helpful.

There's probably an effect of people who tried as hard as they could to get their goods loaded under the wire before the tariffs took effect, and so the following week would be less, but the following week would be closer to normal.

Predictions are based on historical data which isn’t relevant in this case.

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

Sal Mercogliano who runs "What's Going On with Shipping?" is one of the best informed commentators in the subjects of logistics and shipping. He's also a skilled presenter... enough so that I subscribe to his channel and I've not got any real special interest in subject (but I do recognize it's economic importance).

Also, in a different comment, his work at Campbell is mentioned, but I think that leaves open why he has anything important to say on the subject. His bio at the U.S. Naval Institute is more informative:

"Dr. Salvatore R. Mercogliano is an associate professor of history at Campbell University in North Carolina and adjunct professor at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. He holds a bachelor of science in marine transportation from the State University of New York Maritime College, along with a merchant marine deck officer license (unlimited tonnage 2nd mate), a master’s in maritime history and nautical archaeology from East Carolina University, and a Ph.D. in military and naval history from the University of Alabama."

https://www.usni.org/people/salvatore-r-mercogliano

Wow I loved this "What's going on with US Ports" video. Subscribed. I love channels like this. People with a deep understanding that just report facts as they are.

I wish more mainstream media did this.

That's the thing. "Mainstream" Media in the US are no longer bound to the fairness doctrine. Thus, we have corporate ownership which steers how a story is written or at all. Independent media beholden only to their viewers (not corporate benefactors) are incentivized to do what you want more effectively.

Been seeing his videos pop up more. Wasn’t sure if it was completely legit or just reactionary takes but I’ll check one out now thanks.

im in the merchant marine and this guy is our god

this guy really blew up after that bridge went down in Baltimore

> The youtuber 'What's going on with shipping?'

The "Youtuber" is actually a professor and Chair, Department of History, Criminal Justice and Politics at Campbell:

* https://directory.campbell.edu/people/sal-mercogliano/

* https://twitter.com/mercoglianos

You mean the chair of the department of history is actually a YouTuber.

Someday colleges will have Tubers, who outrank Chairs.

The job is essentially the same: publish or perish.

I, like Houston Wade, have for years been like, "why don't I see any ships or activity" each time I pass by the ports of LA/LB. But I, unlike Houston Wade, wouldn't be so arrogant to conclude from my observation that shipping has stopped.

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.

Two interesting things I took away from that were first that the uncertainty and constant changes of mind by the President on the actual rates and lack of reliable communications were almost as harmful as the tariffs. Second, that there is a "snowball effect" in that you often have to pre-pay, so you take out more loans at a worse interest rate to make your order and then if because costs went up, you order fewer items as well as being hit with a higher per-item cost.

The whole thing is a mess and shows how incompetent the current implementation is.

it's called strategic uncertainty :D

Hmm, I’ve been using the phrase a fox in the hen house. Seems apt?

It’s why the government needs to curb and heel billionaires. A bunch of techbros who mistake money for smarts pushes an obviously dumb strategy to a pack of populist clowns and grifters.

That should not be possible. The kickback from this mania is going to be pretty extreme pain for these clowns.

I fear you will be proved wrong.

If history is any indication, then the blowback will be leveraged (successfully) to point fingers at other parties (doesn't matter who), and then the proposed remedy will be to double-down:

"It didn't work the first time around because we weren't strong-willed/determined/patriotic enough, this time We Must Go All In, and stamp out any dissidents with extreme prejudice, for they are the Enemy holding us back from our Finest Hour!"

etc, etc.

"needs to" and "should not" are idealistic words.

What will happen is either a collapse of the US economy or a collapse of the Trump administration.

Even if the administration grows a brain and reverses course, we are on course for a COVID-like supply chain shock that will cause major pain. Not to mention the loss of trust that will absolutely depress the needed regrowth.

They'll blame Joe Biden, immigrants, Democrats, the Woke Mob, DEI, and trans people before they blame themselves.

It’s even farmers and growers -

https://youtu.be/aCI9xlMrb1w

Seeds sourced from China - which a lot are - have skyrocketed in price.

Maybe I am being foolishly optimistic, the section in the video (~ 4:50) where it is mentioned that some giant seed corporation is staying the course betting that this thing will blow over in a quarter or so actually gives me some hope ?

IMO, which isn’t worth a lot, it’ll go on as long as Trump refuses to eat crow. China hunkered down under extreme duress during COVID and emerged stable. We barely managed to survive much milder restrictions. And that was a global natural disaster of no one’s choosing. In this situation it’s all artificial, but it stokes the nationalism of literally every other country than America. The imperialism and condescension at work, the pure malice towards our allies and partners, it all works against America. China will never bend and nor do they need to or should they. In fact at this point it’s probably a point of national pride to maximize the embarrassment of Trump, and national strategy to push him into a corner hoping he lashes out more and further isolates America from its partners. This is an opportunity for China to break out of the corner America and its partners put it into and flip the roles. Once done, and Trump is neutered and America reduced, China will have a clear path to ascendancy as the primary global super power.

I’m actually not sure this is all bad. A flatter more multipolar world is probably better for everyone, including America. But I think it’ll be a tough time in our history and the people who voted for Trump will be the ones who bear the most pain for his delusional misunderstanding of the way the world actually is vs what he wishes it were.

But if I were to put $5 down, I’d wager this lasts until the GOP political fortunes have been decimated through their hubris and magical thinking and Trump is personally hung out to dry for his strategic blunder in launching a 195 front war.

... what hope exactly.

The republicans in congress are so lost in the sauce that they won't challenge the great orange hope in the quarter. The soonest I think we can see anyone fighting back, politically, won't happen until the midterms AT BEST.

This is assuming that the republicans/trump don't come up with some issue that they can swing the midterms on and/or don't gut the electoral system to the point that they can't lose.

And even then I'm not sure that congress can actually do anything to fix this issue while trump is still in the white house and impeachment and removal seems unachievable. Say congress reverses it's delegation of tarrif power to the president. What happens if trump just does not obey congress, much like they are not obeying the supreme court. Do the republicans in congress have enough of a spine to actually remove him? How do we assure that removal actually takes place in the event that we can even meet the threshold? The man still, ostensibly, still has control of the military. Perhaps the military, secret service, any other guys with guns just refuses to help him resist congress like they did when he tried to deploy the military after jan 6th.. but they seem to have already cleaned house at the pentagon, with hagseth getting rid of more people who aren't sufficiently loyal enough to do crimes and/or coup the fucking government for trump.

shit is getting scary.

The retailers need to start showing tariff charge as separate line. People have the right to to see what they voted for. Yesterday Trump frantically called Bezos when Bezos threatened to do it, and Bezos seems to have backed up (probably got some concession for that).

Edit: it is also can be treated as a consumer right to know, by analogy with food labeling), what are the major components of the price they are paying, and thus allowing for informed choice.

Retailers and middlemen typically don't like exposing how much -they- paid for an item. Exposing tariffs would show how much things are marked up from time of landing to reaching the shelves.

Varies based on market. Where middle men actually do things and add lots of value they don't generally care.

When your value-add is fronting the cash for a container of something, doing paper pushing and sending the resultant product to an Amazon warehouse people will ask tough questions like "who are all these parties you're pushing papers to? What is their purpose and should they even exist in 2025" all of which is just a proxy for "if we fixed the system you wouldn't exist" and you can't really fault them for that.

Those with high markup wouldn't get affected that much. Those with lower markup will get affected more, and they need to show the tariff charge.

The tariff charge may also naturally include say the directly related charges like for example the increased insurance premium for the increased, due to the tariff, insured value of the goods while they are being transported/stored. Add to that increased financing required to cover all those costs, etc., and that can snowball to feel significant even for the ones with higher markup.

That's not really how markup works.

Let's say 1 pay x for a product. Gross markup is say 100%. Do I sell it for 2x. Let's say there's a tariff cost of y. That means the cost price is x + y. I mark that up to 2x + 2y. It's easy to up the price by 2y and disclose the tariff as "z%".

But this of course presumes all your expenses remain flat. And they likely don't. As your expenses go up (2nd order effects) that 100% markup starts to not be enough. So the markup goes up a bit.

Plus since things are going up anyway, and since there's uncertainty (which has a cost) we need to bump the price up even more (because hey, free market.)

And when the tariffs go away, we can remove the primary cost, but all the secondary hikes remain. Because that's all just extra profit, and, like, free market right?

This round of inflation is going to make covid look mild. (And as I point out to my Republican friends, just remember, you voted for this.)

The way out of this is to devalue the dollar. That would erode the real value of the outstanding debt (which is delimited in dollars.) Alas the US has worked very hard to make the dollar the world currency, so devaluing it is complex.

The US consumer (voter) is of course the big loser. At least this generation is. Folk born around 2030 may be the big winners.

I on the other hand think it would be great if they exposed how much they paid.

We need a browser extension that shows estimated tariffs based on "made in" info on the page.

Amazon reportedly threatened that this morning.

They backed down immediately after Trump (or someone at the Whitehouse) called Bezos.

Amazon considered it as a separate line, the White House called it un-American, Amazon stopped considering it.

No they didn’t. If anything it was being discussed and most likely only for Amazon Haul, which is not normal Amazon.

That said I wish they would.

>the White House called it un-American

If anything, what can be more American than making clear when and how much the government is taxing the people? It is like at the core of this nation’s founding.

Source? I did not see this active anywhere, only mentioned.

Yeah, I watched that last week. Absolutely outstanding reporting, which I had not expected from a gaming channel.

This could get really ugly when the shelves start going empty. This may make the toilet paper incident seem quaint in comparison.

Empty shelves are just one of the symptoms. The real pain will come from companies having to deal with increased taxes (that's what tariffs are) for Chinese components, decreased exports (counter tariffs, anti US sentiments), etc. and then their follow up to that would be using tools like layoffs, price increases, etc. Some of those companies might have to close doors and go bankrupt. If that happens a lot you get the ripple effect on banks via foreclosures of businesses and mortgages (like sixteen years ago).

There are of course quite a few large US businesses being affected directly by this stuff. I imagine that they are not happy with this. And that level of unhappiness will translate into shifts in political donations. Which, I'm sure is something that will get more apparent as next year's mid term elections get closer. That's a stick that can be (and probably already is) wielded that might produce results soonish.

At least, I imagine the CEOs of GM, Ford, Boeing, etc. might have a thing or two to say about seeing China disappear as a market where they can do business to sell stuff or to source key components that they require for their own products. China was not being subtle rejecting delivery of a couple of new Boeing planes. And reductions in container traffic from China (which are the life blood of the US economy) are of course a very visible thing. And since container deliveries are critical for supply chains of most manufacturing that actually still happens in the US, that could get ugly really quickly.

Worst case all this triggers a recession. Those are rarely predicted accurately until after they've happened. But the signs aren't great and wall street is definitely nervous. A few stocks crashing because investors start panic selling could do the job. We're not there yet, but it got close a few weeks ago.

> Worst case all this triggers a recession.

Recession is probably the best case scenario. If only we get through this with just a recession!

The world's economic inter-dependence is one of the things that have kept World War 3 at bay for decades. Nobody's going to start a hot war with their neighbor when they rely on each other through trading. Russia shows what happens when you economically isolate a country with sanctions and force them to rely on themselves economically: It reduces one of the downsides of warfighting. Do we really want an isolated, independent and self-sufficient China?

>Nobody's going to start a hot war with their neighbor when they rely on each other through trading.

World War 1 begs to differ, hell even the Russian invasion of Crimea back in 2014 begs to differ. Economic interdependence dosen't stop authoritarians, it only threatens democracies with a larger margin for dissent.

That isn't the lesson from Russia invading Ukraine.

The lesson from Russia invading Ukraine is that the presence of authoritarians anywhere is a threat to democracies everywhere.

The kind of people who crush freedom aren't content to just do so within their own borders and will eventually do so to others around them.

As such it should be the priority of all democracies to extinguish authoritarians whenever possible.

russia is absolute reverse of what you believe. putin didnt even blink about all the German gas trade when attacking Ukraine.

https://www.dw.com/en/the-history-of-nord-stream/a-58618313

"In the early 2000s, however, German politicians had developed a contrary, more liberal theory — that more economic interdependence between Russia and western Europe would create peace in the long run. As trade increased, democracy would inevitably prevail."

>Do we really want an isolated, independent and self-sufficient China?

China being cut off from ~15%? of their market does not mean China isolation, it means US rewriting Child labor laws to fill Walmart shelves.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/03/31/us-child-...

https://www.newsweek.com/child-labor-laws-changed-five-state...

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/25/business/florida-child-la...

So what you're saying is, there still won't be a world war, but everyone else might go to war with the US.

> The world's economic inter-dependence is one of the things that have kept World War 3 at bay for decades.

Common misconception that trade prevents war and war prevents trade. Turns out that it is wrong: https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501782466/trad...

I think the more pointed question is: will USA aggression be unchecked if the economies disconnected?

China hasn't invaded anyone. USA is conducting an active genocide in Gaza and the Iraq War wasn't that long ago. I could name so many other incidents of unbridled aggression it boggles the mind.

> The real pain will come from companies having to deal with increased taxes (that's what tariffs are) for Chinese components

In a sane world, that's what targeted tariffs are. You don't want to tariffs across the whole board because you might affect exporting manufactures whose prices will go through the roof and might experience disruption. It is kind of what is happening with auto tariffs now that there is a huge blow back but one wonder how many industries out there can't voice their concerns or are not aware of this.

Any assumption that there is targeting or any sort of planning by the chaos goblins we currently have running this administration is long on hope and short on reality.

> There are of course quite a few large US businesses being affected directly by this stuff. I imagine that they are not happy with this. And that level of unhappiness will translate into shifts in political donations. Which, I'm sure is something that will get more apparent as next year's mid term elections get closer.

Maybe. It is possible, though, that we are now in a situation like in the third Nolan Batman movie where Tom hardy puts his hand on the rich guy’s neck and says “do you feel in charge?”

I'm already seeing this in the life-sciences. Illumina, who used to own the game of DNA sequencing, has been laying people off left and right. All my contacts within the company are laid off.

Illumina is a special edge case as they've been a victim of souring China-US relations before the tariffs even started: https://www.fiercebiotech.com/medtech/illumina-aims-cut-100m...

> At least, I imagine the CEOs of GM, Ford, Boeing, etc. might have a thing or two to say about seeing China disappear as a market where they can do business to sell stuff....

They largely weren't doing this anyway due to Chinese economic policy. For example:

> Ford's market share in China has declined significantly.In 2024, Ford's market share was 1.6%, down from a peak of 4.7% in 2015. Over the past three years, Ford's average market share in China has been a modest 1.8%.

Ford is a bad example because the Chinese never really liked American cars. Before the EV boom they preferred BBA (Mercedes Benz, BMW, Audi). Right now it's homegrown brands.

Pharmaceuticals would be a slightly better example.

GM used to sell more cars in China than in the US .Same with VW , Mercedes and BMW

Plus China as a country seems more capable of "toughing it out". That's not necessarily a compliment on the situation, but it is what it is.

Why do you say "China was nor subtle by rejecting a plane"?

It was some semi private line, who would have to pay twice the usual price in a unfavorable market.

The part apparatchiks didnt need to order them. They just dont want to overpay.

I sincerely hope you’re right, but all initial evidence is the oligarchs kissing the ring, not pulling the strings. Maybe when it becomes obvious that they’re not getting anything for all that abasement they change tacks, but nothing in the Trump era has suggested to me that these folks have the tiger by anything but the tail.

>all initial evidence is the oligarchs kissing the ring, not pulling the strings.

It was comical how quickly amazon back pedaled on showing tariffs transparently in pricing as soon as the whitehouse complained.

Dictionary definition of oligarchy: "a small group of people having control of a country, organization, or institution."

If you're "kissing the ring", you're not in control. The people with the ring are.

To spell it out, the US is not governed by a billionaire oligarchy.

is it not obvious the oligarchs control the globalist politicians and not the nationalists?

Is it controversial to say that if you really wanted to "fight the oligarchy", your policy positions would be pretty similar to the America first agenda (sans social issues)?

Recession is the base case. The worst case is ... worse.

Well, now, that depends on when and who exactly is involved in large scale protests against the Trump administration.

If they call out the active duty military against middle-aged, white, protestors, they'll have a problem. If it's against students and minorities,...

I am very much on the fence on this one. I can tell you, without a shadow of a doubt, based on having been in manufacturing across various industries for over thirty years, that the US and Europe have been on a path to loose nearly all manufacturing capacity within ten years, maybe twenty at best.

How do we compare the pain (and yes, some destruction) that we have to endure today against the devastation that is clearly in the horizon for both regions within a decade or two?

To be sure, what's going on today should have been done twenty to thirty years ago. Doing this today is far more difficult and painful.

I think Kevin O'Leary put it best: What we want a reasonably free markets. It isn't just about tariffs. It's about regulatory lockout, intellectual property and more.

For example, India imposes as much as a 110% tariff on US cars and trucks. The list of such actions --which also included non-tariff rules-based restrictions-- is long. From China imposing up to 25% on our cars, autos, chemicals and food to the EU, Canada, Mexico and others following suit. Brazil collected over $800 million in retaliatory tariffs blocking US pharmaceuticals, autos and textiles.

In other words, the relationship with hundreds of countries has been very one-sided for a long time. US industry needs to export to thrive, but if countries like Turkey impose 140% tariffs on our autos and trucks, markets are de-facto shut down.

How long can any country survive this kind of inequity?

So, yeah, this is a rough moment. I hope it is for the best. Everyone benefits from a more open and balanced market.

And then, of course, there's one of the elephants in the room: Intellectual property theft.

Going back to Kevin O'Learly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKkdor6_rw4

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=567065763062114

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGFWWqbDwuw

https://www.tmz.com/watch/kevin-o-leary-china-tariffs-04-09-...

Whatever your hopes and dreams around domestic manufacturing, blanket tariffs capriciously imposed at random are unlikely to get any dream closer to reality, except perhaps the dream of total devastation of all manufacturing.

Let's look at what an actual domestic manufacturer has to say about tariffs[1]?

Oh, looks bad! Turns out, manufacturers import stuff, add value to it, and sell it for more money!

Hopefully we'll get more cast iron plants in Cape Cod. I'm off to the mill!

[1]https://www.vcstar.com/story/news/local/2025/04/09/trump-tar...

> I am very much on the fence on this one. I can tell you, without a shadow of a doubt, based on having been in manufacturing across various industries for over thirty years, that the US and Europe have been on a path to loose nearly all manufacturing capacity within ten years, maybe twenty at best.

I've now been around long enough to remember people saying this 10-20 years ago. Seems to be plenty of manufacturing still happening.

Why would the US and EU losing manufacturing be bad?

> How long can any country survive this kind of inequity?

What worries me more is that the US has been funding global military security through deficit spending funded by foreign investors (who got their dollars from US trade). We're cutting legs off that stool, so we might see more wars and a declining dollar, never mind fewer cheap imports.

You lost me at Kevin O’Leary. He’s historically been a dishonest and unethical snake oil salesman and I doubt he’s changed.

One of my career highlights was having him explain how much it will do for my career to do his project at a discount (I was helping a friend as a favor) and I told Kevin that it was just as likely to have the opposite effect.

> In other words, the relationship with hundreds of countries has been very one-sided for a long time. US industry needs to export to thrive, but if countries like Turkey impose 140% tariffs on our autos and trucks, markets are de-facto shut down.

These comparisons (and conclusions of one-sidedness) always leave the greatest benefit the US has enjoyed: access to a massive labor force willing to do work most Americans aren't[1] at wages lower than are Legal in the US.

[1] https://www.cato.org/blog/americans-think-manufacturing-empl...

Kevin O'Leary is not a credentialed economist.

I think you do a good job of high-lighting the underlying problem.

Which is not being discussed enough.

And that the current situation can go on a long time but not forever.

My only complaint with China's intellectual property theft is that they don't share.

It's my genuine belief that the vast majority of intellectual property ownership is purely to draw a moat around a country's oligarchs. Copyright does not protect creators and patents do not protect inventors[0].

Trump's thinking is:

- America used to have lots of tariffs in the 70s, and lots of jobs in the 70s,

- But we got rid of the tariffs and the jobs moved,

- So if I put the tariffs back the jobs will come back!

Problem is, we're not in the same market we were in the 70s, and all those tariffs risk turning us into Brazil. More specifically the reason why the intellectual property system we have is fucked is because it's designed to let corporations move jobs to foreign countries while still maintaining maximum control over the end result. It's designed to facilitate neocolonialism.

The "open and balanced" global market you're decrying was, until recently, heavily tilted to favor American ownership over everything. China and Mexico are there to castrate the unions: if you don't work for peanuts, we move the work to another country that will, and we don't worry about any of the business risk that entails because WIPO and Berne ensure none of the goods the other country makes get to compete with us unless we put our stamp on it.

You know what would really break this system? If China, Canada, or some other country were to junk WIPO and DMCA 1201 and start up a national lab to develop and distribute jailbreaks for shitty disposable American tech. Practically speaking, America can't stop knowledge from entering the country, and it would spur a huge explosion of new American businesses to fix the shit our own oligarchs broke.

In a world where you can't rely on intellectual property bullshit, outsourcing becomes a crapshoot, and it makes a lot more sense to pay workers what they're worth and focus on automation instead.

[0] Yes, they can and have been used by creators in the past, but that's not what the system does today.

Manufacturing investment in the US hit all time highs during Biden, by far.

> the elephants in the room: Intellectual property theft.

Yup. China has been systematically stealing the IP of anything made in their country since forever. Companies kept falling for it because the potential market looked so big. Now BYD makes cars as good as Tesla and it's all #ShockedPikachuFace

People seem to think, including very disturbingly our secretary of the Treasury, the companies maintain huge warehouses of back stock.

That hasn't been the case since the mid-90s when the PC revolution started pushing out supply chain management software. If I recall correctly, Walmart was the innovator in this space in one of their key ways to gain economic advantage over other retailers was low back stock demand tracking

On top of that the '90s was when free trade agreements came into Vogue and the supply lines and outsourcing of manufacturing cranked up into high gear.

So as we saw with covid, any disruption to this a highly extended optimized supply chain results in massive disruption.

I can't see how any massive new tariffs isn't going to essentially be a covid level or worse disruption to this entire supply chain

> That hasn't been the case since the mid-90s when the PC revolution started pushing out supply chain management software.

I worked on PC software for optimizing warehouse inventory in the mid-1980s. The system was designed by an applied mathematician and used by large national companies. Customers made substantial savings - double digit percentages of inventory cost.

When you trim to the bone it's not entirely dissimilar to the kind of savings that can be achieved in other ways.

In the 1970's, when Nixon launched his recession after an equivalent lead-up, I worked at the University for one semester in a work-study job. They only paid minimum wage, and these were easy jobs like library assistants where you were expected to be able to study about half the time.

But you were working for the State just like all other State employees.

You know, the maintenance people, the professors, highway patrol, capitol admin staff, etc. Career employees.

Like everyone else, you had to wait two weeks after starting work before you would receive your first paycheck.

About halfway through the semester it got so bad they decided to hold paychecks for two more weeks.

You mean everybody who worked for the State just didn't get anything for two weeks until it picked back up again?

Yup.

At the end of the semester I was made whole because my checks still kept coming in for a couple more weeks after I was no longer employed there.

"Just like" the career employees who would be collecting for a couple extra weeks themselves decades later after they retire.

Well, it was a recession, what do you want, prosperity? That ship sailed a long time ago :\

The source of prosperity done receded.

Toyota is famous for inventing Just-in-Time production and logistics system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Production_System

Yeah, it goes back to at least the 1950s. Different companies adopted it at different times, but by the 1980s most already had. Note that Just in time is not a single metric, with one correct level of inventory. Adopting it in 1950 doesn't mean the company isn't still finding more places to adopt it.

FTA: Maybe not empty but less choice and alternatives not necessarily what you're looking for.

“I don’t see a complete emptiness on store shelves or online when we’re buying. But if you’re out looking for a blue shirt, you might find 11 purple ones and one blue in a size that’s not yours. So we’ll start seeing less choice on those shelves simply because we’re not getting the variety of goods coming in here based on the additional costs in place. And for that one blue shirt that’s still left, you’ll see a price hike,” Seroka said.

It takes exactly 1 "bare shelves" post on social media to kick off panic buying which cascades.

In fact it doesn't take much of a change in regular buying habits to cause that it it's all aligned in the same direction.

i.e. a chunk of the toilet paper "shortage" can just be every customer suddenly buying one more pack that day "just to be on the safe side". Your local supermarket isn't expecting that, so the shelves still clear out that day - then the last person snaps a pic for social media....

Yeah, my Great Aunt and her friends would coordinate their purchase of sugar for making preserves each year w/ the local grocer --- while each of them could have bought all they needed at once, his stocking couldn't accommodate that, so everyone would let him know when they would start, and stop, buying a 5 lb. bag each week for each year's preserves.

It's that one person on the highway driving just a little too fast and a little too close to the person in front of them, then they tap on their brakes and it starts the chain reaction of 3 hours of bumper to bumper rush hour traffic.

This guy is not pricing in panic and irrational behavior. People do the dumbest shit when supplies start getting low and the news is non-stop talking about shortages.

Markets don't work that way. Supply is tuned to demand. When the supply is artificially constrained while the demand remains constant, it further strains already limited supplies, leading to empty shelves and rising prices. This is a fundamental principle of market economics. It's important to understand how these dynamics operate to grasp the broader implications of reduced imports from China.

I think the above quote is accounting for both constrained supply and reduced demand from rising prices. Vendors consolidate their product lines to remove redundant (ish) offerings due to reduced demand and the new difficulties in managing supply chains. I.e. a shirt may only come in 3 colors instead of 10, and it may be harder to get the popular color because vendors are less likely to keep a large stock in warehouses.

It doesn't violate market dynamics that I can see, though I'm far from an expert.

One possible complication is that there’s quite a lot of waste that’s tolerated in pursuit of fashion and variety. (For example, Ross Dress For Less specializes in liquidating excess inventory.)

So I wonder how that plays out? My guess is that retailers take fewer risks when ordering, sticking with products that they know they can sell, even if prices are higher.

But they will still guess wrong sometimes.

There's a lot of levers and people to squeeze along the way:

Currency Manipulation to relatively increase Chinese manufacturing income

Relocating manufacturing based on tariffs

Retail margin

US based design & engineering of products

Advertising and other marketing activities

Depending on the product some will be passed onto consumers. But for something like Nike's it's probably more like fewer shoe designers, Footlockers, less advertising, smaller contracts to athletes, more manufacturing in non-China countries, and so on. Everyone is going to take a bit of a bit and it's probably not going to be super noticable to any one part.

No reason to expect empty shelves. Higher prices for stuff that can't be moved out of China. Sure. But it's a tariff, not an embargo.

In addition tik-tok/insta are having post after post warning people that the shelves are going to be empty which tends to feedback into itself.

If you were going to buy 1 of X normally if you think X may be out for sometime you may end up buying 2-4 of X which will run the shelves out very quickly when 10-15% of purchasers do that unexpectedly. Other people see the shelves emptying and buy more too.

Going to be messy.

All I have to say is imagine if Biden did this, what the news would be saying.

So I look for shirts and only find pants.

Not an empty shelf in the literal way but empty on my demand

Which will cause a significant revenue issue for the retailer.

And depending on how much you’ve thought ahead, a significant supply chain issue for you.

Notably, this is really going to screw everyone using JIT supply chains.

Honestly I doubt that shelves will be empty. Retailers are ordering less stuff from China because they’re predicting that demand will go down when the price is higher. If retailers were marking stuff up roughly 100% and take the same markup (in absolute terms), everything from China will go up about 70%, and people will simply not be able to afford to buy as much stuff.

No. The price insensitive shoppers will buy everything and the shelves will be empty.

HN should have a feature where you can tag a prediction to come back for review after some period of time.

"Show HN: Automatic HN Prediction Market"

we need the reddit remindme bot

Trade war isn't real until shelves are empty and black market is blooming, like a regular war.

> the toilet paper

I guess these US manufacturers will need to step it up: Kimberly-Clark, Procter & Gamble, and Georgia-Pacific

The feedstock for toilet paper (wood pulp) comes from Canada.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trumps-tariffs-on-canadian-lumber...

Paper is one of the things one should be least worried about.

We source chips from Canada because it's marginally cheaper to source it from there. It's not like the US doesn't have a ton of sources of wood pulp. Canada just has bigger cheaper sources (comparing like for like quality).

We also burn a lot of "less than ideal for paper" chips for energy rather than feed them into a paper mill, also for marginal cost per result reasons.

Wood chips suitable for paper pulp are also hugely elastic in the same way that recycled metal is. Huge volume is either directed into the supply chain or not based on marginal price. The people making every wood product are choosing what do with their waste based on chip prices and energy prices. Even your local tree service is choosing what to chip and where to dump based on economic conditions and balancing act between relative prices.

If you wanna be worried about something be worried about stuff we don't make much of in the US. Super high volume commodity widgets made from metal, all manner of electronics, etc, basically the kind of stuff where our only domestic capacity is super high dollar stuff to serve defense and aerospace.

As we learned from COVID-19, manufacturers really don't like building new factories or even changing the tooling to support a different kind of product (such as commercial vs household toilet paper) for a short-lived surge in demand.

An antifragile solution would be learning to use a bidet.

I've seen all three begin short-shipping us, especially on cheaper brands.

Who is “us”? Do you work for a grocery store?

With raw material coming from other countries, probably.

let's not forget, "In 2024, China supplied approximately 13.4% of the total goods imported by the United States, with a total value of $438.9 billion. " '

And those are heavily concentrated in certain industries like basic electronics, toys, etc.

in anycase, it'll be interesting to see how it plays out.

This assumes domestic production does not ramp up to meet demand. Yes, prices will increase (pushing down demand).

I work for an org that does packaging (boxes, pallets, etc) for a whole bunch of manufacturing, ag, and retail firms (Tesla, Thyssenkrup, Target, etc.) and we are booming right now.

The "empty shelves" discourse is alarmist and honestly kind of annoying.

Almost all of the food on the shelves is locally produced or, in the very least, not produced in China. Some foods may disappear or become more expensive but there'll really be no disruption in food supply.

This will however affect markets dominated by Chinese goods, particularly clothing. Even here the effects will be somewhat mitigated by existing strategies to avoid China tariffs eg selling through Vietnam.

Certain businesses will be hit hard. And that's really the biggest problem: cascading effects leading to an inevitable recession. Already, truckers who ship goods from ports are sitting around idle. We've cut tens of thousands from the government. More layoffs are to come.

I both agree and have been worried that this is overly reductive.

As far as I can tell, literally nothing that I buy regularly is directly sourced from China. Or anywhere other than the US & neighboring countries. The vast majority of my groceries are locally sourced. And the vast majority of the rest come from expected regions, for instance San Marzano tomatoes from Italy. I do not regularly buy clothes, children's supplies, electronics, etc. Sure, I'll buy them once in a while but not with any regularity. My understanding is that the classic paper products famous from COVID shortages are made in the US.

So with that in mind what you say is 100% true, at least for me. But I'm not so sure. Who makes the containers that my local milk is put into? Who makes the cans that my canned goods are using? What meta-products are being consumed by the local industries, such as the ones making my TP? I have a feeling the answer is scarier than it'd seem on the surface. But I don't know.

I haven't seen anyone saying that there's going to be no food. All reporting I've seen is that Walmart/Target shelves are going to be empty because of the glut of consumer goods they sell that are manufacture in China, ie, clothing, toys, electronics, etc.

Consider that even for food that is produced locally, there are inputs (tin for cans, electricity, etc.) that is being negatively impacted by the tariff circus, unnecessarily.

I buy dish soap on a regular basis. Not sure where the soap is produced, but I would guess the bottles might be from China -- a lot of packaging is. Sure, there are some US companies that make bottles, but can they expand their capacity? Probably not quickly.

I think there will be a lot of unintuitive effects from things like packaging.

Everyone here is worried about it from the American side, but China has motivation to settle this too, so they can continue to sell their enshitified plastic crap. It's not like most other wealthy countries want it, at least not any more than they are already buying.

I'd be fine if cheaply made plastic junk is gone from the shelves. Where are the environmentalists now? The ones who warned us to stop overconsuming? Their tribe conflicts with Trump so their refrain goes mute until a more convenient time.

A Walmart superstore is stacked to the gills with products of all description.

What makes lots of money is not exactly having so many different choices stocked, instead having a good proportion of items "fly off the shelf" can be the focus.

The high-performance store will have numerous shelves completely clear every day, sometimes more than once per day, and they are perfectly geared to accommodate that when it happens without waiting until the more-organized nightly re-stocking.

The store is huge, and if a big shelf stays clear for any length of time it's quite noticeable. But can still represent the tip of the iceberg if that also means that quite a big multiple of inventory is also absent from "behind the curtain" in the warehouses and upstream.

Genuine question but how likely is that to happen?

The media doesn't seem to be doing a good job articulating what the (likely) real world impact is going to be. I keep hearing how other countries are negotiating but when you look into the details, there is nothing of substance actually happening.

I asked a good friend that runs a multi-billion dollar CPG business that relies on China imports. His answer:

> Almost guaranteed.

> There are some categories (toys, pet stuff,computer accessories) where HUGE percentages of goods are made in china. Those shelves will be empty as soon as inventory runs out, which will be soon.

> Shelves would get re-stocked once tariffs are removed and the ships start sailing again.

> If it takes longer than 60 days from now, we're looking at 10s of thousands of bankruptcies. This will make covid look like a weekend at the ritz carlton. Biggest financial crisis since the great depression.

My takeaway: People are not taking this NEARLY seriously enough.

My tinfoil hat interpretation: The US govt knows how serious this is, and they know that if people panic (which honestly, they fucking should) it increases China's leverage substantially.

This is a good discussion around the supply chain issues that will likely be happening: https://youtu.be/-dgHWv-Dh6Q?t=1370

Ryan runs Flexport which is a supply chain company so its from the "source" if you will.

It's already happening for certain products, but we don't see it yet. The shelves lag a couple months behind the actual purchases. For example, you are Walmart and buy a bulk order of something from China. The order processes a couple days later, then it sits and waits to be shipped for days lets say. It gets in the ship and takes 2-3 weeks to get here. Then it takes a couple days to be unloaded. Then it needs to get trucked to the main distribution center. Then it's packaged/processed and shipped to intermediate warehouses. Then from there, shipped to the store, sits for a few days-week then gets put on shelves.

Even worse is that depending on the product, you might not even be able to place an order from the importer because they are completely unable to actually price the things with all of the uncertainty right now. A friend of mine is a hearing device retailer/distributor. He tried to order way more than he usually does a month ago to get ahead of this. The order was denied because they said they have no idea how to price any of it. So he's just going to have to wait an indeterminate amount of time which then makes it impossible for him to plan. He has to jack up his prices to cover future potential price increases and to be able to keep the lights on if they run out of stock.

I'm in the same boat as you, trying to figure out the impacts of all this. We're hearing reports that the ports are empty, and we know the CEOs of Walmart, Target, and Home Depot recently visited Trump to warn him of empty store shelves. The fact that these key ports are seeing reduced shipments corroborates their warning.

Meanwhile, Kevin Hassett, Director of the National Economic Council, said just yesterday that he doesn't believe any shelves will be empty due to retailers planning ahead for the supply disruption—directly contradicting what the CEOs of those retailers had warned Trump just a few days earlier.

I have serious concerns about the competency of this administration. The CEOs of major retailers have a vested interest in understanding supply and demand and have intimate knowledge of supply chains and retail channels. If they say shelves are going to be empty, then you can take it to the bank that shelves are going to be empty.

Everything is pointing to shelves being empty. What happens after the shelves start going empty is what has me concerned. It could be a minor issue, or it could lead to mass panic. My concern is that I have no confidence in this administration's ability to resolve any issues that may arise due to their actions. They're making the mess and are expecting us to clean it up after them.

I don’t think the media really knows what will happen. Trump randomly decides to lift tariffs and any prediction is off.

Well every time they speculate people pounce on them for being wrong, lying, fake news, etc.

We will see!

The smart ones will head to the hardware store instead of rushing to the paper: bidet-washing-tube will makes you free of toilet paper for life.

Cost: 10-30$

Installation: 20min with basic tools on your existing toilet.

Usage: tons and tons of online tutorials because 1/3 of the world already use that daily. But you can also figure it out yourself easely, it’s way easier than managing node_modules on a shared project.

Even cheaper alternative: a simple plastic bottle half-full and half bend. Many cheap labours in my city (Paris, fr) use one at work (cook, night cleaners, construction…). While the bourgeoisie fight for pooping clean during a world crisis, their Pakistani labor do they shit as usual. We should be inspired.

As someone who has used real bidets, I've tried bidet attachments - they suck.

I'm going to remain with my traditional toilet until I move into my "forever home" at which point I will install bidets.

Since we got a bidet we use more toilet paper for drying than we used to use for wiping. Perhaps the full-size ones work better, but the fans for add-on bidets are worthless.

If it's famine you're worried about, I think we'll be ok as long as the govt doesn't try to set prices/mandate supply [1] (which isn't out of the question I suppose.)

If it's war due to decreased economic interdependence, well yes that would be much worse.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_of_famines

Setting prices seems like it is just one executive order away...

I would imagine the reaction from the white house will be to attack businesses for failing to order product for political reasons, traitors trying to help China avoid paying Tarrifs.

And I imagine this strategy will be more effective than one would first think, since it's nuts. I imagine it will change business behavior, maybe even to the point that business act against their own economic interests, the question is how much? The crazy thing is that will the Trump effect last long enough to negatively impact the next president or the Democratic congress assuming they win in 2026? The presidents numbers wouldn't suggest that it could go that long, but the world is upside down right now.

It's a good thing the United States doesn't depend on China for toilet paper, then.

> The United States primarily sources its toilet paper domestically, with about 90% being manufactured within the country.However, a significant portion of imports come from Canada and Mexico.

In fact, the United States does not depend on China for any essential consumer goods from what I can find.

What do you define as "essential consumer goods"?

American parents would probably put car seats and strollers in that bucket.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/28/business/strollers-car-seats-...

What is the source of wood for that paper? Canada?

Retail shelves are a easy personally viewable measure, but a ramping logistics disruption & price increase on all sorts of processes we rely on daily may also be going on in parallel with more empty shelves. Parts for factories, cars, appliances, power stations etc...

Trump will back down and lift the teriffs the second there are widespread consequences. He’ll give some excuse, and his supporters will eat it up.

That or he’ll make so many deals with CEOs for political support and financial contributions that we won’t even notice that a few smaller companies went out of business or pulled out of the US.

It may not matter. The ships that were supposed to be here, aren't. Even if the tariffs were lifted today, it would still take weeks for new orders to be shipped and delivered to the US. We're very much in the FO part of FAFO

The flexport CEO, in the video shared in this discussion, predicts a back down on the basis that 80% of small business that rely on Chinese imports going bust if they continue.

Even if they attempt to switch suppliers to avoid tariffs they'll be at the back of the line behind the bigger fish.

This could get really ugly when the shelves start going empty.

Retailers Fear Toy Shortages at Christmas as Tariffs Freeze Supply Chain: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/29/business/trump-tariffs-ch...

In a Toy Association survey of 410 toy manufacturers with annual sales of less than $100 million, more than 60 percent said they had canceled orders, and around 50 percent said they would go out of business within weeks or months if the tariffs remained. … She had placed a large order of scooters to arrive for the summer. But the importer rerouted the shipment to Canada because it did not want to pay the tariff.

Is there a sense of what products are actually at risk of not being in stock?

Anything low cost that requires a significant amount of manual labor to assemble. So clothes, toys, accessories, etc.

A lot of packaging is sourced from China.

Things that wouldn't otherwise be a problem will become a problem. Potentially that includes bottles, tins, plastic food packaging, niche carboard boxes.

Imports from China are ~40% of all US imports. Even a 10% drop would be difficult, and at current levels it's going to be more than that.

Anything made of cheap plastic, like all kids toys and lower end electronics. Anything you wouldn't really pay double for.

The weird thing is that toilet paper isn’t even a necessity. It’s a convenience. One could do just as well with a damp washcloth. Sure, you have to wash it afterwards, but it’s not that bad.

Or one could use a bidet, but I think most of these are imported from China. Oops.

I made my first trip (of many) to the store to stock up on shelf-stable items this morning.

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"...

The 2.5-3x higher is probably temporary while people rush to ship stuff before the tariffs. It may get much cheaper shortly.

Good point, but several Chinese freight forwarders say, on the contrary, the shipping lanes are empty. The "ship" costs a fixed amount, if you can make a full load, the cost is shared between parties. With LCL (less-than-container-load), I'm very dependent on the volume.

I've also seen pictures of empty roads to Yantian port circulating on LinkedIn (usually it would be completely jammed during May holidays).

That's also a far different route... Has demand for additional shipping to Europe gone up because of increased demand? Is it seasonal? Does the US army's fairly incompetent police action [1][2] against Yemeni Houthis have much impact?

I'm very curious!

[1] https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/02/04/commander-of-... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/29/fighter-jet-...

If the quote is higher, doesn't that mean the demand is higher and less empty containers are available? The EU does not have an extreme tariff on most products from china, only some. I guess I'm missing something here.

Begging the question/speaking out of my butt: fewer empty containers may mean they're running fewer ships, not filling up the normal volume.

Same number of ships, but they are skipping the shortcut through he Suez canal (and have been for a year) thus meaning they take longer and so can haul a lot less.

Folks are anticipating increases in shipping due to large companies making last-minute buying decisions for the Christmas holiday instead of starting to ship things now through December. As a result, it will be very hard to find a container toward Q3 (at least this is what I'm reading across news articles)

This is fascinating. I wonder what impacts island nations like New Zealand are facing?

Interesting. Inspected more regularly by who?

If the assumed be negative indicators for the US economy come to light, and it’s made clear that the US has committed economic suicide, now with data, there aren’t going to be many safe harbors in the world for the average person.

The Suez canal is very much affecting anyone in the EU and has for a lot longer than Trump has been in office. Almost no ships have been going that way since early/mid last year, preferring to go the more expensive/long way around Africa instead.

Well, I had two quotes: one right before the tariffs at 22 rmb/kg door to door, and one end of April, at 58 rmb/kg door to door. We shopped around quite a bit, everybody say it's crazy right now.

>And that's when you think "I'm far away from the US and the madness does not concern me"

But why would you ever think that?

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...

None of these are easy, and none of them are free. Prices are going up regardless.

Ha ha, the ribbon manufacturer is about to get a lot more than they bargained for. Who the fuck is going to buy ribbon in a depression?

It will be interesting to see if retailers choose raising prices or if they lean more towards ... just not offering some things.

Aliexpress is already displaying tariff-inclusive prices.

A curious dynamic: A seller importing a container of cargo to Amazon (or other US warehouse) has to pay the tariffs up front while trusting that dear leader won't lower the tariff amount before they can sell them. A seller that ships directly from China has a committed purchase with cash in hand by the time the specific tariff needs to be paid. I can see this leading to drastically less selection from US warehouses of long tail items that would otherwise sit around.

Speculation: I wouldn't be surprised if Aliexpress (/Choice) charges sellers a fixed fee based on the current tariff rates, but still covers whatever the tariff ends up being when the item arrives at the port, to make it really straightforward for sellers. The kind of eat-it investment you get in a society working to build up institutions rather than tear them down.

For many goods a 145% tariff is a ban for all intents and purposes and no different to a 100% tariff or a 200% tariff. This is just more evidence (as if we needed it) that the administration has no idea what they're doing.

Certain goods are extremely high mark up. For example, clothing is typically 100-200% markup. So if you buy a $5 t-shirt and sell it for $15, the tariffed price is now ~$12. You may find retailers will sell that at $20, absorbing some of the cost on a temporary basis.

Also, many such retailers have already sought to diversify their supply chains (eg buying clothing from Vietnam and other places).

Gilead might be in for empty shelves like Venezuela and Cuba :-D

I'll be sad, but amused, when Trump and Co declare that each state should build factories to fill their needs for basic products ... similar to proposals made during the economic collapse days in Venezuela.

The United States has never had such incompetence in governance. Americans aren't accustomed to this degree of ineptness.

I had a conversation with someone who I usually respect, and would say is an intelligent person. He's a trump supporter for the manufacturing support.

He said, "It's just not that hard to get these factories back to the states. We can get that done this month."

The amount of cognitive dissonance and just outright believing the lies is astounding.

Trump won't say that states need to build those factories. He'll tell governors that they're failures for not having done it already.

I think it will be both. Raising prices for some goods because of tariffs (and adding some percent for good measure and profit) while also discontinuing others. It may go like the car market where cheaper options are slowly being phased out and the focus goes to higher priced vehicles.

Prices never really came down after the COVID shortages, I really don't expect this round of shortage to be any different. Companies have a convenient excuse to jack up prices with the comforting lie that they'll go back down when shortages are over.

A retailer would be irrational to let stock run out instead of continuously raising prices.

For stuff that people need and will buy at heavily inflated prices, sure. But there are a lot of non-essential items that people probably won't buy if the price increases significantly. And for those items, I suspect a lot of stores will just let the shelves stay empty instead of spending a lot of money for inventory they can't sell.

Candy bars for example. They want to charge $3 for a single candy bar now, but no one wants to pay that much so they're selling them 2 for $5.

But retailers have studied that this trick isn't going to last because not everyone wants to buy candy bars in bulk, and they won't spend more than $3 for a single candy bar, which means if it goes any higher they won't by any candy bars at all.

The customer will only bear so much, though, so at some point the businesses that keep buying stock and raising prices will be left with stock that cannot be priced any higher, leaving it to be unloaded at a loss. That can be a far worse situation than not having any stock at all. Either way, it is an uncomfortable gamble.

Not enough greed: Stockpile in a back warehouse and raise prices on the two or three items per day you allow on the shelves.

Depends on the product and if your marketing is low prices do you want to be the one to first crank them up and get Trump all upset?

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

About a year ago I checked out every US manufacturer I could find. Most don't offer any pricing of any kind, strictly 'call for quote'. The ones that did offer pricing either don't want small prototype runs, or charge 5-10x what China does, and with 2-3x lead time, even counting shipping.

Only one or two I looked at offered an online quote tool, and none of them came even close to the usability and functionality of PCBWay's website. The best one I found was this ridiculously overbuilt system with an embedded 3D engine and one of those shitty 200MB web apps that take 30 seconds to register a click and breaks your back button.

USA is simply not competitive with China on PCBs. For small, cash strapped business, domestic manufacture has never been an option. I expect prices will only go up and up as our entire domestic capacity is absorbed by big corps that can afford the premium. I have no idea how us little guys are supposed to get boards now.

> I have no idea how us little guys are supposed to get boards now.

You're not supposed to. It's a backhanded way to quash all competition.

It’s true US isn’t competitive but what you looked at was hobbyist PCB services which is not representative of the industry as a whole. I get the frustration but i don’t see how you can draw any conclusion from it.

It is not just hobbyist. My friend runs a business of smart stove tops and they do have a lot of R&D which needs small runs as they fine-tune the electronics and test them out. All the R&D is now moving out.

Engineering often needs one off PCBs until their design is trusted enough to work. That doesn't look any different from what a hobbyist wants other than the account type. (final manufacturing will likely be done by someone else)

This is something I am personally mixed about, working in electronics and having had boards made both domestically and in China.

The thing is that China is just really damn good at electronics manufacturing. Their tooling is cutting edge, their workers are career electronics manufacturing workers, and their supply chain is insane.

However I do have a feeling of "if you build it, they will come". But I think it would need to rely heavily on automation. And I'm also not sure how you would deal with the waste in the US. In China the volume is high enough to have local companies that deal with all the byproduct. In the US I would imagine you would have to pay through the nose to dispose of it through some small time contractor 6 states away.

I think there are some things where a lot of the silicone actually comes from the US, or the designs are static enough that domestic manufacturing could make a lot of sense. I was specifically pitching consumer GaN power supplies, which are simple enough that you can build them without your supply chain blowing up every 3 months or without having to always get the newest and greatest machinery.

Something like a smartphone would be borderline impossible to do well in the US and keep up with trends.

These are the king of capabilities, like semiconductor manufacturing, that we want to have (at least some) locally for more reasons than just economics though. It seems like a national security issue.

An on shore competitor to JLCPCB would be amazing. I assume most of the work is automated as well.

You might as well watch the entire process of how JLCPCB works and then tell me if all of that can be "automated": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljOoGyCso8s

That video is amazing. Thanks!

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.

Wouldn't there be an excess of containers?

No because containers are in high demand overall. While the US is importing less, stuff to the EU is taking the long way around Africa and that means more containers are needed.

>While the US is importing less, stuff to the EU is taking the long way around Africa and that means more containers are needed.

OK, then the unavailability of containers is actually due to piracy in the middle east.

The US importing less, by itself, decreases the demand for containers.

Containers are also manufactured… in China. Container, sea and others, are products in and of themselves so importing them for use even just to transport goods domestically will cost more.

Oh no, I’m in the same situation and was wondering how this would affect the quote.

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.

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...

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-...

I think you’re underestimating how many products have inputs that come from China and overestimating how many direct-ship packages the average person receives internationally.

The GP sounds more like someone that routinely bought from places like Shein, Temu, etc.

I never shopped Temu / Shein but got lots of electronics from AliExpress. My last purchase was a spectrometer, I would never be able to afford it now with tariffs + de minimus gone.

I think this will hurt the DIY / Maker / IoT community hard.

The DIY / Maker crowd seems the most insulated from this, being in a prime position to recycle and repurpose materials that are already here to make their own tools.

That doesn’t apply to the containers Walmart/ bestbuy/ target/ etc import. They’re going to pay the insane tariffs but spread the cost over all of their inventory to help hide it from consumers. No matter what prices will go up. The locally sourced higher volume goods like food will end up subsidizing slower moving items like TVs.

Taxpayers as a group will pay $1 for each $0.50 collected on that. We are not yet on track for a net savings on spending.

Some of that impact will be positive, as de minimis shipments are a major route for importing drugs and their precursors into the US: https://www.cbp.gov/frontline/buyer-beware-bad-actors-exploi...

And strip searching everyone who enters a school building would have a positive impact on the rate of school shootings.

Over-enforcement creates its own major issues. The cure is worse than the disease.

We don't have 120,000 school shooting deaths a year, but we do have that many overdose fatalities. I'd say the cure is just fine in this case.

There is a good yt channel that deciphers all shipping related news (collisions, cable cuts etc) and makes it more digestible to non-sailors like me here. Definitely recommend.

https://www.youtube.com/@wgowshipping

He pointed out that these stats are week on week so tend to understate how big the drop really is on a more long term scale

[not affiliated, just like the channel]

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.

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.

I looked for something like this yesterday, and came across this dashboard with trends for the Port of LA only: https://signal.portoptimizer.com/ which seems to be a port activity dashboard (demo with real data) for the port of LA via portoptimizer.com

You'll see the trends don't seem so bad yet, but they have a previous-12-weeks graph of current year vs previous year which will be interesting to follow

A few options:

- https://www.bts.gov/freight-indicators

- https://www.marinetraffic.com/

- https://www.vesselfinder.com/

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.

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

The vast amount of warehousing in SoCal is in the Inland Empire, the logistics capital of the country, not LA proper. There's very little warehousing being done in LA and there's still ample land in the IE and high desert areas. It should have zero effect on housing prices in the area, they already moved further inland since ecommerce took off 20 years ago and only accelerated since the pandemic.

Housing won't be affected in LA because the issue is zoning + cost to get started. There are too many reviews blocking housing; it isn't blocked by warehouses being "more valuable" than housing in those lots

What’s the data on exports as well? Some stories of farmers taking massive hits with demand that was only fulfilled by global market.

Depends on the commodity and any reciprocal (actually reciprocal) tariffs that were imposed on US products.

Soybean farmers are hit hard because a lot of their crops went to China. Meanwhile some other exports are basically unaffected right now.

Other countries have generally not been so haphazard in application of tariffs. They don’t want to actively harm their citizens and they try to plan tariffs with more precision and consideration.

It's also worth noting that some of the damage will be permanent.

Trump's mini trade war with China in 2018 (for which he had to bail out farmers) led to US farmers permanently losing market share in soybean exports to Brazil.

> In 2018, during Trump's first term, the U.S. and China engaged in tit-for-tat tariffs that led Beijing to take permanent steps to reduce its reliance on American farm goods.

> The share of China's soybean imports from the United States dropped to 18% in the first 11 months of 2024, from 40% in the whole of 2016, while Brazil's share grew to 74% from 46%, according to Chinese customs data.

https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/chinese-buyers-s...

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).

I don't see why it should increase the costs of shipping. Can you outline a plausible mechanism?

If I haven't bought a ps5 yet, is now the time to do it?

[dupe] More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43843821

Of all the death and terror caused by this administration, at least we might get an American build of Lua

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...

>The administration has absolutely no idea what they're doing.

In general, I agree with your sentiment, but there are competent people in the administration. However, all of them are paralyzed because Trump can alter any plan or policy at a whim, and he insists being involved in everything. And you can see that in the interviews Bessent or even Lutnick give - where they hedge everything because they know it could change any minute. For example, there was no plan to set 145% tariffs on Chinese imports, Trump just did it out of nowhere on TruthSocial.

That's also true of foreign policy in general. Rubio and State Department have zero power at the moment. Neither the Russia-Ukraine peace plan, nor Iranian nuclear arms control, nor Gaza-Israel negotiations are going through the State Department.

>All of this is happening so the wealthiest 1000 people, who already pay almost no taxes, can pay slightly less in taxes.

I disagree with that. This all happening because Trump is incompetent but also arrogant and highly opinionated. I don't think there is a nefarious plan here. Trump probably really does think that you can replace income tax with tariff revenue.

interviews Bessent or even Lutnick give - where they hedge everything because they know it could change any minute

The problem with this is they quickly realised it's easier to BS and lie than to be honest and noncommittal. In the latter case they'd have to fess up at some point and say 'well no we didn't have a plan for that/see that coming/whatever' or admit that they simply don't know the answers to relevant questions. Instead they say one thing one day, and when Trump reverses the policy they come on TV a day or two later smirking and saying 'well this was always the plan'. Once their public statements are disconnected from consequences they realize that lying is a way to wield power and of course that quickly becomes intoxicating and addictive.

Right now it might seem to them like it's just some white lies for the greater good/to assuage public anxiety, but in my view that sort of behavior is a one-way street. I think they've already shredded whatever professional credibility they had, and when things get economically bad they'll be incapable of offering leadership or reassurance that would calm markets (in contrast to, say, Lewis Powell at the Federal Reserve). If the economic situation gets sufficiently bad, Trump will throw them to the wolves and hire in some new faces to buy time. We saw this in the first administration, every time he replaced someone the meda and Congress would grant them a honeymoon period and talk about how much better and calmer things were getting, even though this was based on desire rather than outcomes.

Trump is the culmination of the 50+ year Republican project, a project intentionally designed to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich. He's not an anomaly. He's the inevitable end product of decades of consistent insitutional destruction and corruption.

I agree that Trump is delusional about tafiffs but think abou tit: income tax is pretty much the only progressive tax left. There's serious momentum in the conservative movement to get rid of it for that reason: it's further wealth transfer to the ultra-wealthy.

It sounds like you're not seeing the bigger picture here: the wealthy view themselves as inherently better. In tech circles (including Elon and Thiel) transhumanism is popular.

What is transhumanism ultimately? it's eugenics. It's why these weirdos fill the world with their IVR fetishes, spreading their "superior" genes. It's co-opted the conservative movement, which itself is rooted in eugenics (ie white supremacy).

FOR HE IS THE KWISATZ HADERACH!

He isn't actually, if anything he is an empty suit that yells whatever the last guy in the room told him and that guy tends to be the most extreme dumbass on whatever topic it was.

So when you hear him yell about tarrifs, you are hearing him yell whatever peter navaro last told him (plus or minus trumps misunderstanding of the situation, see also trump screaming at the reporter yesterday about how the maryland guy in the el salvadorian prison has literal MS13 tattooed on his knuckles, where it's very clear that the picture he saw had those letters photoshopped onto the photo)

When you hear him yell about immigration/the border/racistbullshit, he's just yelling whatever stephen miller yelled at him.

He is just the avatar for whatever sychophant that is currently in his good graces (ie whoever bribed him or sucked his dick last (see also laura loomer))

Seattle ports are currently empty, will be interesting to see if this holds true . https://seemorerocks.substack.com/p/port-of-seattle-empty-ze...

>Seattle ports are currently empty...

At the time of my response, there are five container ships in Eliot Bay, and a large container ship, along with a smaller container ship that just arrived, docked at Harbor Island (the primary port in question).

https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:-122.338/c...

lies, source: I looked out my window

Can't wait to find out...

I am literally looking at a port with many containers and a fully loaded ship waiting to unload more containers at the port of Seattle right this second.

(based on other replies I guess I'm not the only one in Pioneer Square lol)

> Remember what I told all of you about stocking up on stuff and arbitraging it later once the shelves were emptied? Well...we're just about there.

Price gouging is so hot rn…

I hate to be so cynical these days....but if this is true, that would mean a lot of dockworkers/longshoreman are out of jobs or not working right? Truck drivers, and who knows what other jobs are just not doing anything at this point?

But, China itself is automating away most of those jobs. It's a stark difference between Chinese and Western—just look at the phraseology we're using, without thinking about it: "out of jobs"; in China's zeitgeist they wouldn't say they lost jobs to technology, they say they "saved 80 percent of manpower" [0].

[0] https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202312/1304443.shtml ("China’s first self-built fully automated dock enters operation in Qingdao, Shandong Province" (2023))

I think there were already multiple posts on HN about this.

Most recent I remember UPS firing 20 000 people.

Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43835849

Dockworkers, logistics, truck delivery drivers, warehouse workers, etc.

On the other hand, I guess it might be a great time for small shops and businesses that produce low to medium tech stuff- from crafts, clothing and furniture to electronics. Even if the country's going to suffer they should profit handsomely (which is not a bad thing per se).

Intermodal freight drayage industry, which is largely comprised of a thousands of very small and ineffocoently run mom and pop nepo-companies run dependent upon an open tolerance of very scammy business tactics extending temporary surcharges indefinitely, milking covid business relief loans to the fullest extent possible) in order to survive, is going to experience a mass die-off if this tariff war lasts another 6 to 9 months.

> I hate to be so cynical these days....but if this is true, that would mean a lot of

But since we’re being cynical, is importing stuff just to keep the port workers busy a good idea?

This SS post is fear porn. The Seattle Times article they link to at the bottom of their post gives actual numbers, not just vibes based on what poster can see with their binoculars.

"Data from the Marine Exchange of Puget Sound, an industry association, shows the number of arriving container ships berthing at Seattle and Tacoma terminals from April 1 to April 24 was down 12% compared with the same period in 2024."

Make no mistake this is bad, but "Port of Seattle EMPTY - ZERO Inbound Ocean Container Ships" is some straight up bullshit.

Trump only announced the tariffs on April 2, and the crossing takes weeks, and some traffic will left later than that having gambled that it'd be undone in transit. (Some of it was!)

The stat for "April 1 to April 24" is likely to be different than the stat on April 27th alone. Both may be true.

The port does look pretty empty on https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:-122.373/c...

Your stat also includes Tacoma, a close but different port. The Port of Seattle isn't quite empty, but numbers... aren't awesome.

https://www.king5.com/article/news/verify/what-we-can-verify...

> Northwest Seaport Alliance Port of Seattle Commissioner, Ryan Calkins, said the future does not look as good. "The last forecast I saw was forecasting out over the next three months, and each month was forecasted to be down around 25% per month,” Calkins said. The Seaport Alliance said some ships are coming in with less cargo than anticipated. In some cases, it is 30% lower.

Less traffic means less pollution, i guess it's good.

It’s Trump’s plan to save the environment

2025, in which Americans realize Greatness is never achieved alone.

good sick of all the cheap Chinese products that break in a week and have to order another. Even the clothing seems to fade and be useless in 6 months.

You could always buy more expensive clothing, now you’ll be forced to

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.

That’s what winning looks like!

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.

Stopping the flow entirely would collapse western society as we would have no access to technology. I don't think anyone sane disagrees the geopolitical impact of dependence on China is a bad thing, but the mechanism by which this flow of goods is being disrupted is going to have a very negative impact on people's quality of life.

>Stopping the flow entirely would collapse western society as we would have no access to technology.

That is a wild exaggeration!

(Not that I want the flow to stop.)

I don't think anyone is advocating for incentivizing forced/child labour.

Given that the ILAB link you posted itself is maintained by EO 13126 signed by the Clinton Administration, I think there can be nuance in the discussion around whether or not the blanket application of certain foreign policy instruments is the right way to induce a change in the domestic policy of another country to solve the problem of bad labour practices.

We can do this without it becoming an argument about whether trade is "good" or "bad" depending on what "side" you are on.

The Republican party is eagerly dismantling labor protections and environmental regulations as fast as it cand in as many jurisdictions as it can.

I remember you used to complain about the degree of corruption in your country of origin and contrast it unfavorably with the solid institutions and procedural safeguards in the US. How times have changed.

China is not only cheaper but in many cases better at manufacturing.

I sometimes deal with a Canadian vs a Chinese supplier for a component of a consumer product, and the difference in customer service, quality, and speed is stark. AND it’s cheaper. The only issue from a logistics point of view is that China is far and shipping is slow.

Is Canadian quality bad? As a European I don't have much experience with stuff made in Canada, I think. At least I can't think of any...

If it was only China being tariffed, instead of including all the allies we need to stand against China, you would start to have a point. If they were based on something other than a 1600s child king's understanding of trade balance, maybe focused on particular kinds of manufacturing, or even just explicitly based on morals instead of this fantasy of manufacturing returning to the US, you would have a point. But none of those things are true. Trump is at best a stopped clock with gears poking out through the casing.

That might all be true, but Trump is also the only one in decades to move the needle in the direction it needs to go. Even Obama was pushing us in the direction of even more free trade with TPP.

> It means a race to the bottom with a foreign country that doesn’t have our labor protections or environmental laws

But even then "better labor laws" or "stronger environmental protections" aren't among the demands being made to China.

This is so disingenuous a defense of the circus going on right now for so many reasons.

First of all, nobody in the current administration would give a shit if somehow China made a deal. The Tariffs would go back down again. The Tariffs are not contingent upon good labor laws in China or anything like that. Like seriously. Yes, the left wants better labor power and yes the left continues to understand that offshoring reduces labor power. But Trump et al are not credible as champions of the working man and this policy is not even really directed that way.

Second, even if this were a policy goal, going about it this way is, and I really can't put this any other way, fucking stupid. Even your dumbest leftist can understand that if you want to make changes to your economy you do so with some lead time and in such a way as to, you know, not empty shelves and drive up costs for the regular working people.

By all means, we should pursue a humanist trade policy that pressures developing countries to improve labor rules, human rights, democracy, etc. But to characterize this present circumstance as that is ridiculous.

> By all means, we should pursue a humanist trade policy that pressures developing countries to improve labor rules, human rights, democracy, etc. But to characterize this present circumstance as that is ridiculous.

But nobody besides Trump is going to do that, because everyone is addicted to the short term boosts of free trade. Obama talked a big game and then in office became a free trader that was pushing TPP before Trump killed it.

The reason Trump happened is because the grownups have been rowing in the wrong direction for 40 years.

Unpopular opinion: this isn't that big of a deal for most people.

Gdp, consumer index scores, all that stuff is a measure of how much poor people are willing to spend and how hard they're working. What really matters is, can these people buy a house? Can they buy eggs?

I don't know how many of them will be all that caught up that they can't buy some disposable flip-flops on Temu anymore. We need to focus more on how hard it is to live than how hard it is to import stuff.

It's an unpopular opinion because it's wrong.

No single aspect of the economy exists in a vacuum. Tariffs and lower shipping volumes portend thousands of small businesses potentially going under, translating to many more thousands of people losing their jobs and incomes. This has many unforeseen knock-on effects in declining economic activity.

Are we really subscribing to Reaganistic trickle-down economic theory now? How sure are we that those imports aren't mostly just lining the pockets of the rich?

We're measuring the wrong things. We need to measure cost of living instead of how empty or full a Port is. We don't know if these two things are correlated yet.

Well, if their business relied on reselling those flipflops they won’t be buying many eggs.

Same if they were transporting them to the store, or delivering them to a home, or…

A decent share of US food [1] and construction materials [2] are imported. So yes, this is going to impact everyone.

[1] https://www.traceone.com/resources/plm-compliance-blog/foods...

[2] https://www.nahb.org/advocacy/top-priorities/building-materi...

These things are being talked about in the context of predicting a future recession, in which case it may be very difficult for people to afford housing and other essentials.

[^1]: Of course, the whole "eggs as an economic indicator" was far right propaganda to conflate the bird flu with the broader economy

People care immensely about having a job. If tariffs mean that businesses don't hire as much or do layoffs then this is a big deal for most people. The unemployment rate doesn't even need to go up that much to have a huge effect on people's general feeling about the economy.

i agree. but i think most people are worried about second order effects (the impact of supply chains on the whole economy) rather than whether or not you can buy 3$ shoes on temu.

the people this impacts aren't buying eggs let alone houses. You and I are addicted to cheap flip flops; many poor people require cheap goods - including household and food - to survive.

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