Tariff Tax Falls on Port Workers First

Trump Says, “Port Job Losses? That’s a Good Thing”

Donald Trump’s claim that he’d “Make America Great Again” is arguably the biggest of his big lies, which we’ll deal with in a future issue. But his disastrous tariff obsession and resulting trade war with China stands out as a dramatic refutation that’s hitting home first and foremost here at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, along with the rest of the regional logistics sector that’s built around them.

The point was driven home on March 8, when a reporter put the issue center stage, questioning Trump about the impacts being felt here.

“We’re seeing as a result that ports here in the U.S., the traffic has really slowed, and now thousands of dockworkers and truck drivers are worried about their jobs,” the reporter said in the Oval Office.

“That means we lose less money … when you say it slowed down, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing,” Trump replied.

“It shows how out of touch the president is with the working class of America,” Teamsters Local 848 President Eric Tate told Random Lengths News. “This is a person that has never worked for a company a day in his life, never had to earn a living (everything has been given to him since birth), and has never known what it is like to be in need of a paycheck to pay bills,” Tate said. “He has no understanding what the everyday Americans are going through.”

From the Insane to the Merely Outrageous

Four days later, with no ships at all coming from China due to his ludicrous 145% tariff, Trump blinked and announced a 90-day pause with “only” 30% tariffs in place. It’s Trump’s second major retreat since rolling out his sweeping tariff plans. He “paused” most tariffs for 90 days in April (actually just reducing them) after the bond market panicked along with the stock market. But to save face, he skyrocketed the China tariffs, turning them into a virtual embargo. At 30%, they’re now “just” a sky-high tariff.

“This is not a deal. The U.S. just blinked,” said Georgetown political scientist Abraham Newman, co-author of Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy, on Bluesky. “The lesson for China: U.S. escalation cannot be maintained. For the U.S.: we will still see inflation and the chance of recession. For the world: the end of U.S. credibility.”

He went on to note that “Even at 30%, they will still cause unnecessary inflation,” and pointed to earlier Yale Budget Lab modeling of just a 20% tariff, which showed price level rises of 1.0-1.2%, equivalent to $1,600 to $2,000 per average household consumer. The same model was subsequently updated to reflect the 30% tariff raised that cost to $2,800.

But above all, what we’re facing is chaos.

Trump raised tariffs on China to 10% on Feb. 1, 20% on March 3, 54% on April 2, 104% on April 8, and 145% on April 9, before the latest cut-back to 30%. So what they will be when is anybody’s guess — and the chaos itself is a huge barrier to trade.

Naturally, industry leaders are trying to be positive, but there are limits.

The Port of LA’s executive director, Gene Seroka, called the reduction “welcome news for consumers, American businesses, workers and the supply chain,” but he added, “Even with this announcement, tariffs remain elevated compared to April 1.” And he told the Wall Street Journal, “Even at a 30% tariff with a 90-day reprieve, it’s not going to dramatically change what we’re seeing right now.” In fact, the first ships with 30% tariffs won’t arrive until the second week of June, the port told Random Lengths.

And even if Trump had called off his tariffs entirely — a true minimal impact scenario —there was already considerable damage, according to Victor Narro, project director and professor of labor studies at UCLA Labor Center.

“The issue is the fluctuation of the market impacts, which is why I don’t see a minimal impact scenario,” Narro said. “Trump has caused such a major disruption to businesses, production and the export and import of goods that it will take time to recover and achieve normalization if he were to call off tariffs today. The better question is how much our economy will sink due to the duration of Trump’s tariff policy.”

Seroka was hopeful. “To avoid further uncertainty and disruption of trade, both sides should work together swiftly toward a long-term agreement,” he said. “Additionally, it’s important for the United States to work with other nations to reduce existing tariffs.”

But none of that seems likely given Trump’s stubbornly-held, profoundly false beliefs: that trade deficits mean the U.S. is “getting ripped off,” that tariffs are paid by other countries, and that they can replace the income tax.

The very idea of tariffs is problematic, the ILWU warned in an earlier policy statement.

“These tariffs don’t put ‘America First’ — they put American working people last,” the ILWU said. “They will kill jobs, raise costs, and fuel economic instability that will ripple through every community in this country.” In particular, it warned of “devastating job losses for workers employed in the global supply chain.”

“Tariffs are taxes,” the ILWU stated bluntly. “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. The 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.”

While dockworkers are hit first and most visibly, their union structure provides the most protection and sense of order, with the bulk of work loss being felt by casuals, whose work has drastically dropped. So far, roughly 10,000 Class A and Class B members have largely been spared. Port truckers are far less organized, and can move to other industries — provided they’re not also crippled. And warehouse workers, the least union-protected of all, face the greatest difficulties.

“You’ll probably see at least a third of the workers could be laid off in the port at this point in the next couple weeks,” Tate told Random Lengths before the 30% announcement. ‘If it continues, it could increase to probably 50 or 60% of them being laid off.” Things shouldn’t get that bad now. But as Seroka said, “it’s not going to dramatically change,” meaning layoffs will continue.

“The thing with truck drivers is they can leave the industry, and that’s the scary part,” Tate said. “We already had truck drivers leaving this industry at the port and now this is going to cause more to leave the industry and probably not come back when the work comes back,” he warned. “Then you’ll have a truck driver shortage at the port where you can’t move the freight, which will drive the cost … which in the long run is a good thing for truckers, but in the short term, people won’t have anything on the shelves come this Christmas this Halloween and Thanksgiving.”

Even before that, back-to-school supplies will be impacted.

“Amazon and other warehouse operators are usually at this point of the year are going to start hiring up … for the beginning of the school rush, which happens in May or June. That’s not happening,” said Sheheryar Kaoosji, executive director of the Warehouse Worker Resource Center.

While port traffic for May is projected to be down 25% from last year, “There’s a lot of freight still in the United States that are stored in facilities, so it’s not going to be just some massive drop off,” he said. “But I think what we’re seeing right now is a pause.”

How much the sudden drop from 145% to 30% will change things remains unclear, since so many different actors may respond in different ways, especially given Trump’s unpredictability, which is the exact opposite of what business-owners want. Even at their most eager, their first new shipments from China won’t arrive until the second week in June.

Meanwhile, “The drop-off is starting to happen,” Kaoosji said. “We’re starting to see small businesses are having less and less traction, they’re starting to see less and less activity, especially restaurants, we’re hearing. People are going out to eat less, people are doing less of the kind of luxury or recreational stuff, I think, is where cutbacks are happening.”

It’s a pattern he’s seen before. “Working class people know how to survive and do what they have to do, so it’s not necessarily they’re going to stop consuming, they’re going to transition from the Walmart to the Dollar Tree from the Dollar Tree to the swap meet. That’s what we’re going to see — the consumption patterns move, and people are going to try to do what they can to survive. That’s what they always do.”

“We are already seeing the stagnation of the GDP and other indicators that point to this country entering a recession,” Narro added. “We have gone through major recessions in the past, but we have always had a degree of confidence in the president and his administration to see us through them. This is not the case today. What we have with President Trump is unprecedented. He inherited a vibrant, strong, and healthy economy from Biden, and now he appears to be doing everything possible to go in the reverse direction. The latest polls show that the majority of Americans have very little to no confidence in his handling of the economy.”

The sudden tariff reduction is supposed to address that. But calling it a deal is highly misleading. It’s actually “a 90-day temporary reprieve in the trade war,” Narro said. “There is uncertainty on what will happen in 90-days if they don’t arrive at an agreement,” and that’s assuming Trump doesn’t change his mind again before the 90 days are up.

“Five years ago there was a much much more severe set of layoffs,” Kaoosji said, but with COVID-19, both the state and federal government stepped in to provide massive assistance. But, “Neither entity is positioned financially or politically to look out for us” this time.

He noted, municipal governments were struggling with budget deficits, which would have long-term effects, with multi-year austerity budgets. As a result, “The services that are supposed to make up for these moments are the first things that are going to get cut … So it just keeps compounding, all those different ways that these cuts happen, somehow it works out that it’s always the working class and the poor people get it.”

What’s more, “Undocumented workers who are a significant percentage of the warehouse struck workers are already living under terror, are already facing the threat of kidnapping by the state every day, and are going to work despite that, because they believe in working and taking care of their families.”

In short, “It’s kind of a compounding factor. Immigration stuff, plus this economic stuff. I don’t think it’s an accident to use economic terrorism to get rid of people who are on the bubble,” he said. “I think it is psychologically really damaging and it’s, from my perspective, entirely intentional.”

Surprisingly, Tate says that most truckers aren’t particularly worried.

“Disappointingly, people are wrapped up in their everyday lives,” he said. “They’re not paying attention as much as I think they should be. They will probably be surprised when the shit hits the fan.” At 30%, rather than 145%, Chinese imports may return, but no one knows at what level. And it’s his job to be concerned. “It’s going to drastically affecting the union, less revenue coming in, less guys on the street, I got to go out and find jobs for these guys somewhere else, which is not an easy task,” he said.

“I haven’t gotten any notices yet from the companies, but I would think next week they’re going to start laying people off. They’re going to try and not do that, because they know how hard it is to get people back if they let them go and they’re going to try to find ways to keep people busy, and see if they can weather the storm,” Tate explained. “But at some point you have to cut people loose in order for the company to survive. In the next week or two they’ll start making those decisions.” The reduced tariff rate may give them more breathing room — perhaps putting those decisions off another month or so — but it’s not guaranteed.

In short, Trump hasn’t removed uncertainty, he’s just changed the form it takes. And he could do that again at a moment’s notice.

Looking Ahead

With little prospect of government support, Kaoosji cited two forms of organizing as crucial.

“I think what we learned from COVID is that we have to learn to depend on each other, to depend on each other for mutual aid and support,” he said. “It’s not going to make up for the state, but we do know that what we have is each other, our communities and that’s what folks are going to have to do,” he said. He cited the example of community organizing in Altadena, after the fire there, especially the role played by the National Day Laborer Organization which is based there.

Second, he said, “The other side of this is politicizing the moment, not just take care of each other, but pointing our fingers at who is responsible, which is not just the administration but companies like Amazon that will have short-term layoffs, but will actually benefit from this.” The logic is simple, Kaoosji explained. “Their competitors are going to go out of business because they can survive it — a long recession —they have all the money in the world. And when their competitors go out of business, then they can pick up their business or even purchase those companies.” It’s a pattern seen in recessions dating back to the 1800s.

“It’s always the billionaires who come out of it on top, no matter how it plays out,” he said.

If Elon Musk’s association with the Trump administration has made him a toxic figure, something similar could happen with Jeff Bezos and Trump’s tariffs, if the dynamic Kaoosji described can be made crystal clear, and connected to Amazon’s broader patterns of extraction and exploitation that Amazon workers and nearby communities have been struggling with for years.

One thing is certain: the Inland Empire will be a bellwether of what’s to come. “With goods movement being American consumption, when American consumption goes down, the Inland Empire’s economy gets hit harder, because we are so highly dependent on that economy,” Kaoosji said. “When the United States gets a cold, the Inland Empire gets the flu.”