LONG BEACH, Calif.—Empty containers unloaded from cargo ships are piling up in Long Beach, Calif. One-fifth of container cargo ship trips into its port for the month of April were cancelled. Stevedores—the people who load and unload the ships—along with port truckers and warehouse workers are all losing their jobs. Unions are pissed. Workers are worried. Economists predict a coming slump, no matter what comes of the trade war. And the local congressman is really upset.
President Donald Trump’s tariffs are starting to bite, even as he signals pauses and a partial retreat on his high tariff barriers—taxes the U.S. public will pay—against goods made in China and other countries.
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), which represents those West Coast port workers, hates the Republican president’s tariffs. It calls them “an economic war on working people.”
The union said: “It is clear that corporations and foreign countries will pass on costs to consumers while they continue to rake in record profits. Meanwhile, families struggling to get by are being hit with higher grocery bills, unaffordable car payments, and soaring costs for everyday necessities.”
And the reaction of the corporate capitalist class? When the tariff storm seethed and then began to settle, Wall Street cheered, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped by almost a thousand points—even as unemployment in the ports of Los Angeles-Long Beach began to sharply rise.
While the final level at which tariffs might end up is still anyone’s guess, many corporations are already using the import taxes as an excuse to raise prices, whether their products are affected or not. Inflation ticked up slightly last month, just as Trump’s tariff taxes began to kick in.
What Trump hasn’t acknowledged, but economists do, is the fact his tariffs will cost the average U.S. family between $1,600 and $3,800 yearly—and perhaps even more. Low- and moderate-income working families can’t afford that extra cost.
Trump’s reaction? No pain, no gain.
“That’s good. That means we lose less money,” he told reporters the first full week of May, referring to the U.S. trade deficit with other nations. “When you say it [imports] slowed down, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing.”
Trump also claimed, on the campaign trail, that high tariffs would force firms which offshored factories to China, Mexico, and other countries with lower labor costs to bring those factories back here. His Commerce Secretary, former Cantor Fitzgerald CEO and cryptocurrency czar Howard Lutnick, whose personal assets total $806 million, added: “Be optimistic. The president truthed it out.”
Welcome to the wacky world of the president’s trade policy, or lack of it, where back-and-forth seems to be the order of the day—and workers suffer because of it.
Trump trade war has targeted the whole world, but the U.S.’s top three trading partners—Canada, Mexico, and China—have particularly been in his crosshairs. He’s tried to manipulate all three, but so far, much of his effort has backfired, especially when it comes to China. Many are taking notice.
“I don’t think people understand how serious this is,” Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., who represents Long Beach and adjoining areas, including parts of L.A., told MSNBC in a long interview on May 1.
“This is a huge, huge blow to the economy, to workers right now.” As a result of Trump’s tariffs, container traffic into Long Beach-Los Angeles, the nation’s busiest port, has slumped by 30%, compared to a year ago. It’s back to the troughs of trade that existed in the depths of the coronavirus pandemic—which Trump’s denial exacerbated.
“Most of America’s goods coming in from Asia are coming in from these ports. We are right now seeing historic declines. We are seeing empty containers coming into the United States. We’re now seeing 30% decline of imports coming in from China,” Garcia continued.
“This is catastrophic for workers. What you’re going to start seeing in the weeks and months ahead is truckers doing less jobs, dockworkers have less cargo to unload, and what that means is that consumers will have less on the shelves, and prices are going to go up. People have to understand that you aren’t going to feel the impact today, but you are going to feel it in the months ahead.
“This is going to have a ripple effect on the economy. Every empty container coming in means less jobs, less work, less trucking, less housing, impacts on the supply chain. I tell people ‘Don’t look just to the stock market for our economy. Look to our ports and trade.’ This is where we’re headed and we’re incredibly concerned. Tariffs are going to be a massive tax increase on the American public.”
Workers and their unions are even more upset, according to both official statements and news reports. They know what’s coming, and it isn’t good. It’s already hit small independent trucking firms—owner-operated companies. Many are filing for bankruptcy protection, news outlets have reported.
Trump’s tariffs are also causing hurt in his political strongholds, in places like Mississippi. The state has hopes for a Japanese company’s plan to build an electric car battery factory in the area around Holly Springs, but tariffs on parts and tools for the factory could kill those hopes. (Trump also wants to use the pending “reconciliation” bill now before the House to cut off all EV battery plant funds, period.)
History provides a precedent for the negative impact of high tariffs. When the Great Depression began in October 1929, unemployment rocketed upwards then seemed to flatten out but remained at high levels—until the GOP-run Congress passed and GOP President Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley tariff act of 1930.
“The act drove up prices of imported goods and provoked retaliatory tariff increases by other nations,” a comprehensive summary of key legislation, from Congressional Quarterly, reported. “International trade volume dropped dramatically, and the precipitous decline in production in the U.S. continued.”
When Trump imposed higher tariffs, though not this high, during the pandemic-triggered recession, Chinese-made goods kept coming into West Coast ports, ILWU noted. Importers, many of them U.S. retailers, took the opportunity to jack up prices and line their pockets.
Which is what’s happening or will happen now, union leaders told various news outlets.
“Just today, we had somewhat north of 235 members who sought work but were not able to get it,” Sal DiContanza, Long Beach port liaison for ILWU, told NBC Los Angeles. “It’s beginning to manifest itself as a real loss of jobs and income for our members.”
While full-time stevedores will still get paid despite the slowdown, their contract says, the part-timers and the port drivers—whom the Teamsters have been trying for years to organize—are out of jobs, ILWU adds. Yet Teamsters President Sean O’Brien has been an outspoken supporter of Trump’s tariffs. O’Brien, too, claims they’ll lead to more U.S. factory jobs, and jobs for truckers.
But the ILWU pulled no punches when Trump unveiled his latest round of tariffs, especially 145% levies on imports from China, on April 28. China retaliated by raising its tariffs on U.S. goods to 125%.
“Tariffs are taxes,” the union bluntly said, opening a long position paper. “These and other reckless, shortsighted policies have begun to devastate American workers, harm critical sectors of the economy, and line the pockets of the ultra-wealthy at the expense of hardworking families.
“Tariffs have also sown distrust among our allies and inflamed geopolitical tensions. These tariffs are nothing more than a direct attack on the working class and should be opposed outright.
“Hundreds of thousands of jobs are dependent on or connected to global trade. Constricted trade between the world’s two largest economies could lead to devastating job losses for workers employed in the global supply chain…. Indirect effects of these tariffs, like rising fuel costs and increased costs of construction materials, have already led to layoffs as American businesses struggle to adapt.
“Prices for food, gas, and household goods are rising due to tariffs,” the union warns. The same holds true for building materials. The U.S. has a housing crunch, which the ILWU says will get worse because builders won’t erect more houses—or employ more construction workers—because of high tariffs on key materials, like lumber.
“Corporations will pass on costs to consumers while they continue to rake in record profits. Meanwhile, families struggling to get by are being hit with higher grocery bills, unaffordable car payments, and soaring costs for everyday necessities. These tariffs are nothing less than an economic war on working people,” ILWU declares.
“The reality is clear: These tariffs don’t put ‘America First.’ They put American working people last. They will kill jobs, raise costs, and fuel economic instability that will ripple through every community in this country.” Trump talks about “fair trade,” ILWU says. This isn’t fair trade, the union replies. “We refuse to accept policies that destroy jobs, inflate costs, and sell out the working class.”
The unions and workers aren’t the only Trump tariff foes. The Democratic Attorneys General of Oregon and Arizona, anticipating such a move by Trump, started working on a lawsuit to stop the high tariffs even before Trump’s announcement, Oregon AG Dan Rayfield told Politico in a Q&A. Ten other state AGs joined them. California Gov. Gavin Newsom filed his own separate anti-tariff lawsuit there.
Oregon AFL-CIO President Graham Trainor joined Rayfield’s press conference about the anti-tariff suit. Both Trainor and Rayfield said tariffs make sense in some circumstances, for example when below-cost steel is dumped on U.S. and world markets, forcing steel mill closures here. The Steelworkers have repeatedly documented such dumping of various products, including steel, paper and other materials.
But there must be safeguards and guardrails, already included in U.S. tariff law, before a president can invoke such tariffs, Rayfield pointed out. And the president needs congressional approval. That’s not what Trump did. He invoked an “economic emergency” and used it to impose the tariffs unilaterally.
“There is no rational basis behind what the president is trying to accomplish,” the Oregon AG concludes.
We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!
CONTRIBUTOR
