(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Tariffs?! We don't need no stinking tariffs!!! [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-04-29
In March, the Treasury Dept. reported $9.6 billion in tariffs collected. Then on April 2nd, Trump's 10% on every thing and 145% on China, kicked in.
So far, in April, there is an increase in collected tariffs to $15.9 billion. That's a drop in the bucket. Nobody is getting rich on this. Seeing as how there will be fewer imports day by day, this will not increase, but decrease.
The Port of Los Angeles expects a decrease in shipments of 35% as the effects of the Chinese tariffs affect operations.
"It's as a precipitous drop in volume with a number of major American retailers stopping all shipments from China based on the tariffs," said Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles.
Even Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said that the situation is "unsustainable."
Seroka said that major retailers stocked up and those empty shelves won't start happening for 5 to 7 weeks. But, he made an example that if you wanted a blue shirt in your size, there was 1 available. You might find 12 purple, and that one blue shirt in your size would go up in price.
This chart will give you an idea of what just China's lack of shipments will do to the U.S. volume, and everything else is still going to cost 10% more, and likely shipments from other countries will drop.
Jason Miller, who teaches supply chain economics at Michigan State University, said, "No way we can make up for the 30% to 60% lost volumes from China [via other countries] due to the tariffs. This bodes quite ill for local employment around the most affected ports, as fewer Imports equal fewer drayage drivers and warehouse workers, coupled with a knockoff effects from less activity in general (e.g., local restaurants seeing less business)."
China gave Trump a message today in a video from the Foreign Ministry on social media in English with English and Chinese subtitles.
"Bowing to a bully is like drinking poison to quench thirst --- it only deepens the crisis. History has proven that compromise won't earn you mercy --- kneeling only invites more bullying. China won't kneel down. China will stand firm, no matter how hard the wind blows. Someone has to step forward, torch in hand to shatter the fog and illuminate the path ahead."
It also highlights what happened with our trade in Japan that made their economy weak for decades. China has no intention of letting that happen to them.
Here's a CNN report on that video on YouTube.
The actual complete video on YouTube.
If Donald Trump thinks China is going to blink, he's got another thing coming. He's never going to get that call from Xi Jinping.
The only people in the world who thinks tariffs work, are in the Trump administration and Trump himself.
The only power Trump has had today is to make Amazon stop the plan to show the cost of tariffs on their products. That's just hiding reality.
We will never know what might have been because this is what we've got. How much more bad news can we get about what the tariffs are going to cost us?
Somebody should make Trump look at the response to his tariffs by the Chinese in the video.
Trump is still convinced that tariffs are the way to go. But if you're talking about bringing in maybe, $200 billion a year, and it doesn't look like it's even going to be that now, this is a huge, huge mistake.
But, Trump has this thought in his head, and it's never going to leave until we have suffered so much, that drastic action finally has to happen.
Trump has to go.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/4/29/2319604/-Tariffs-We-don-t-need-no-stinking-tariffs?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
