A special notice for all those MAGA nuts who work on the waterfront
The Orange Felon announced “liberation day” on April 2, missing All Fools Day by just 24 hours, but not fooling anyone in doing so. In the aftermath, the stock market crashed, our long-term trading partners gasped, and then he imposed a 145% tariff on all products coming from China, our largest trading partner. This immediately rang the alarm at the ports in the San Pedro Bay. Just last week, Port of LA executive director, Gene Seroka, projected that shipping was going to be down by 34% this year. This will affect Longshore workers, truckers, and others in the international trade and logistics business.
The shipping companies have already dropped their rates /prices and canceled many sailings to the US out of China for May.
“It’s a precipitous drop in volume, with a number of major American retailers stopping all shipments from China based on the tariffs,” Seroka said on CNBC Tuesday (April 29) morning.
While the Orange Felon pressed pause on his sweeping tariff regime and placed a 10% blanket tax on goods from all other countries, he taxed the goods from China more; China retaliated against the 145% tariff with a 125% duty on American goods (mostly agricultural products). No trade deal has been made, even though he said negotiations are happening. That seems to be a surprise to the Chinese, who said they weren’t talking and they’re not pathological liars. Trump is.
Even further with the threat of tariffs on Canada, its current antipathy towards this administration and the remarks about making them our 51st state, tourism from the north has nearly vanished, flight bookings to the snowbird resorts like Palm Springs have declined.
The Los Angeles area is a major tourist destination, attracting millions of visitors annually.
In 2023, the city welcomed 49.1 million visitors, representing a strong recovery from pre-pandemic levels. It’s a significant economic driver, generating substantial revenue and supporting tens of thousands of jobs. The city offers a wide range of attractions, including theme parks, museums, beaches, and entertainment venues. Who knows what impact this might have on the 2028 Olympics?
According to the LA Tourism and Convention Board, the worries are rippling across a local tourism and hospitality industry that employs a half-million Angelenos and supports more than 1,000 local businesses.
In all, the decline of trade and tourism could easily impact 1.5 million jobs in hospitality, transportation, and the waterfront. You would think that some of the few MAGA ILWU members and others in this community might start to reconsider their approval of “the very stable genius” who launched this global trade war. Instead of making America great again, his tariff tantrum will likely just sink our economy, just like he has done with so many other businesses he has run into the ground. Remember, he’s the one who went bankrupt six times running at New Jersey casinos. And he destroyed the USFL football league as well.
Republicans like to think that you can run the government like a business, as they run up the national debt and then balance the budget off the working poor and working classes. While giving tax breaks to the wealthiest. This “trickle down” theory of economics has been debunked in the past, and we are about to learn again–it’s a flat-out lie–it doesn’t work!
In the process of gaslighting America–blaming immigrants, transsexuals, and student protestors for all the ills of our country–he has just made us more divided. And when you point out that he’s wrong or lied, he attacks the media, the universities, the academics, and scientists, anyone who disagrees with him. What the twice-impeached Orange Felon knows about world economics could be placed on one of his cryptocurrency coins, which is just one more of his many grifts!
For those misguided souls who believed this grifter and voted for him because they thought Biden was too old or incompetent, I ask you just to wait and see what happens to your job at the hotel, on the waterfront, or if you have your 401(k) account. And just pray that he’s unsuccessful in privatizing Social Security or Medicare.
We are already beginning to see the effects on the grocery store shelves because of the immigrant labor shortage. What will you say when your latest Amazon purchase from China has a 145% surcharge?
On top of all this “good” news, “People are very happy with this presidency,” the Orange Felon bragged in an interview with The Atlantic last week. “I’ve had great polls.”
That wasn’t true then, and it’s even less true now. As he hits his 100th day in office today, pollsters have been releasing new surveys, and the results are ugly. NBC News finds that 55 percent of Americans disapprove of the president’s handling of the job, but that’s rosy compared with the 59 percent in a CNN poll. An ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that just 39 percent of Americans approve of his performance—the lowest ever recorded, going back to 1945. Is America just waking up to the fact that they can’t trust a word this grifter has to say?
There are 553 more days to go before the next midterm election. That’s plenty of time for more disruption, more lies, and chaos to rule! And for the disapproval rating to grow, Americans need to figure out just how to resist.