Photos: Wikimedia Commons
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….
