Port of LA imports drop 19% in May as tariffs hit US businesses
'It's very slow here seasonally,' Port of Los Angeles executive director Gene Seroka told reporters last Friday (Jun 13). Seroka warned that US businesses are facing high tariffs and uncertainty during what is typically the start of the peak season, and the consequences are likely to show up on store shelves in a few months.
'We've already blown past summer fashion and looking forward now to back to school and Halloween before the all important year-end holidays,' Seroka said. 'Cargo for those micro seasons needs to be here on the ground right now. I don't necessarily see that in inventory levels.'
The drop in port activity came as importers and retailers – especially those with business in China – grappled with the uncertainty of Trump's trade war. Tariffs on goods from China were as high as 145 per cent in April, when many of the goods arriving in Southern California in May would have left Asian ports.
In May, cargo handlers at the Port of Los Angeles processed a total of about 717,000 equivalent units, or TEUs. About 356,000 of those were imports, a 19 per cent drop compared to a month ago and 9 per cent lower than May 2024, Seroka said.
Exports through Los Angeles fell to just over 120,000 containers, marking the sixth straight month of year-on-year declines as other countries responded with retaliatory tariffs, particularly for US agricultural goods, Seroka said.
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While import flows may pick up again as importers rush to bring goods in during a temporary agreement between the US and China to lower the highest of the tariffs, import levies on goods from China remain prohibitively high for many businesses.
'When all is said and done, buying products out of China right now still costs one and a half times more than it did earlier this year, making products of all types extremely expensive,' Seroka said.
Despite the cancelled and delayed orders, importers still paid a record US$23 billion in customs duties in May, US Treasury data released last week showed.
That translates to an average effective tariff rate of roughly 7.5-8 per cent, up from 2.5 per cent at the beginning of the year, according to Ernie Tedeschi, director of economics at Yale University's Budget Lab and a former Biden administration official.
And there's still a ways to go before all of the tariffs announced by the Trump administration are implemented, Tedeschi said at the Port of Los Angeles briefing. 'We estimate that current policy is equivalent to a 15.5 per cent average effective tariff rate, including the new announcements for 2025 and the levels prior to them.' BLOOMBERG
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