By Levi Sumagaysay | CalMatters
California’s port visitors is starting to look worse now, underneath the results of President Donald Trump’s fickle tariff coverage, than it did on the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The vessel calls, or cancellations, that we’re seeing today (are) starting to exceed the number that we saw in COVID-19,” Mario Cordero, chief government of the Port of Lengthy Seashore, mentioned in an interview with CalMatters in early Could.
At Port of Los Angeles, Govt Director Gene Seroka mentioned throughout a media briefing final week that the port anticipated 80 ships to reach in Could, however 17 have been canceled. By comparability, final 12 months via Could there have been a complete of 12 cancellations. There are 10 cancellations for June already, he added.
Farther north, the Port of Oakland noticed a 15% month-over-month drop in container exercise in April, spokesperson Matt Davis mentioned. It was the primary important decline this 12 months, as tariffs went into impact.
The challenges offered by Trump’s tariffs are “not like COVID,” mentioned Martha Miller, government director of the California Affiliation of Port Authorities, at a enterprise roundtable final week. The unpredictability of Trump’s edicts means there gained’t be a surge of cargo, she mentioned; many companies are ready to behave, together with to order items for import.
Information for the state’s three largest ports verify that jobs are dwindling for longshore employees up and down the state. The numbers of gangs — groups of various sizes that work to deal with cargo — at every of the ports have declined prior to now few weeks, and have dropped 12 months over 12 months. In addition to the numbers of containers on the ports, gang numbers are one other indicator of the quantity of labor out there.
Gary Herrera is president of the Worldwide Longshore Staff Union Native 13, which represents port employees in each Lengthy Seashore and Los Angeles.
Half-time employees usually are not getting any hours proper now, Herrera mentioned throughout a media briefing with Lengthy Seashore officers. He instructed CalMatters that full-time employees — who get first dibs on jobs — will not be getting 40 hours per week, both. Herrera was additionally talking on behalf of a few different locals; altogether they characterize about 9,000 full-time and 6,000 part-time port employees.
Because the tariff drama drags on, the influence will likely be felt by different employees alongside the provision chain, from truck drivers to the workers at warehouses to rail employees and those that work in retail. If and when individuals don’t have sufficient work or lose their jobs, their communities and native economies will undergo, port officers and employees say.
“We live and we work in our community,” Herrera mentioned throughout a latest media briefing with Lengthy Seashore officers. “We spend in our community.”
Luisa Gratz is the president of Worldwide Longshore Staff Union Native 26, which represents many of the safety on the docks in Los Angeles and Lengthy Seashore. The port safety employees — who drive different longshore employees from parking heaps to the ships, amongst different issues — instructed CalMatters that her constituents are additionally struggling.
“When there’s no work for longshoremen, there’s very little work for us except gate monitoring,” she mentioned. “It’s heartbreaking. It’s putting people out of work.”
Truckers are additionally feeling the squeeze from the tariffs.
Cargo ships offload within the Port of Los Angeles Tuesday Feb. 4, 2025. (Photograph by Chuck Bennett, Contributing Photographer)
Eric Tate is secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Native 848, which represents about 8,000 truck drivers in Southern California. He mentioned truckers, particularly part-timers who aren’t assured any hours, are seeing much less work, although he did say truckers noticed a little bit of a pickup in work after Trump quickly diminished tariffs on China.
“We’re trying to gear up and quickly move stuff around,” he mentioned in an interview with CalMatters. “We’re trying to save Christmas.”
He mentioned the continued uncertainty means many truck drivers are barely working 40 hours per week. Some shipper drivers, who transport cargo off ships to ease congestion on ports, could also be working one to 2 days per week, Tate mentioned. “When there’s no ship, there’s no congestion,” he added.
However within the Bay Space, the Port of Oakland is seeing a potential pickup in exercise in June — as of final week, the deliberate canceled ships for that month have been diminished from 12 to 5, port spokesperson Davis mentioned.
The decline in cargo visitors on the ports might change relying on how totally different industries and companies reply to an settlement the Trump administration reached with China on Could 12, which lowers the tax on imports from China from 145% to 30% for 90 days.
Volatility is an issue
In addition to a decline in imports from locations similar to China, the ports are dealing with fewer exports from the state’s agricultural business, due to retaliatory tariffs on U.S. items. Stephanie Magnien Rockwell, chief of workers on the Port of Los Angeles, mentioned in mid-Could that California farmers are taking a success.
“One of our greatest exports are soybeans to China,” she mentioned at a listening to held by State Treasurer Fiona Ma about tariffs. “(But) Brazil, in the month of March, exported more soybeans to China than they have in their entire history.”
The U.S. commerce warfare with China has an outsize impact on California ports: Chinese language items account for 40% of the imports on the Port of Los Angeles, 63% on the Port of Lengthy Seashore and 45% on the Port of Oakland.
Regardless of the momentary take care of China, the shortage of readability is an issue — and tariffs stay excessive, officers, enterprise house owners and others say. Continued modifications within the prices of products make it onerous for companies to plan. And solely sure dimension companies might be able to afford to take a leap and order items from abroad now.
“We can’t generalize here, because of those 125,000 importing companies (whose) goods come through the Port of Los Angeles,” Seroka mentioned to CalMatters. “But safe to say, if there was a little bit of a shortage on stock, or if some felt that the 30% average tariff might go higher, sure, people jump back in.”
However the uncertainty persists, Seroka mentioned. Working example: On Could 23, Trump complained about not with the ability to attain a take care of Europe on tariffs and threatened a 50% tariff on European items — which he mentioned over the weekend could be delayed to July 9. He additionally threatened a 25% tariff on iPhones until Apple begins to make the units in america.
An enormous deal
Lengthy-term, the stakes are excessive and wide-ranging. Port of Lengthy Seashore CEO Cordero mentioned a ten% decline in cargo might imply a ten% decline in jobs. “If you use a round figure of a million jobs stemming from the port operations, that’s a 100,000 job reduction,” he instructed CalMatters.
His port helps jobs value tens of billions of {dollars} in earnings within the 5 surrounding counties, in response to a report just lately launched by the port. The report estimates that in 2023, port exercise contributed $84.4 billion in native, state and federal taxes. These had been taxes paid by people and companies, mentioned Kimberly Ritter-Martinez, the port’s supervisor of economics and funding, through the Lengthy Seashore media briefing.
“When workers and business owners earn income from working at the port or as one of our suppliers, they spend those dollars on groceries, entertainment, travel… and all of that activity supports the broader economy,” she mentioned.
This text was initially revealed on CalMatters and was republished underneath the Inventive Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
