Three years ago the ports on the US west coast, their container terminals and rail lines hopelessly congested by the supposed post-Covid dislocation of value networks, were held to be the locus of a deep and abiding weakness in globalisation. These days it’s the opposite — ports emptying out as Donald Trump’s tariffs punch holes in the sailing schedules of cargo ships from China. Honestly, there’s no pleasing some people.
The first of those actually reflected a rapid post-lockdown recovery of goods through traditional channels rather than anything structurally wrong. Once everyone had bought their first e-bike and stocked their backyards with new garden furniture, the ports (and the economy, more or less) returned to normal. If the US president moderates his tariff war against China, or if value networks find ways of “China-washing” exports to the US via third countries, the same can happen in reverse. Only if Trump is determined to keep ratcheting up protection to stop imports will trade and the economy fail to recover.
In the medium term, it’s going to look pretty nasty no matter what he does. Empty shelves and American children suffering a doll-rationing regime as per Trump’s newfound puritanism will be terrible optics, and small businesses going under because of a shortage of inputs from China might deliver the recession Trump improbably says he’s fine with. Ryan Petersen of the logistics company Flexport, who has emerged as the voice of the freight industry as he did during the post-Covid congestion, says the tariffs are an “asteroid-wiping-out-the-dinosaurs kind of event” for his small business customers.