California's ports face economic devastation as tariffs cripple trade with Asia-Pacific

Ships loaded with containers are pictured at the Port of Los Angeles, California, the United States, on April 29, 2025. [Photo/Xinhua]

California's ports are experiencing worse conditions than during the COVID-19 pandemic as U.S. President Donald Trump's reckless trade war with China and other Asia-Pacific economies harmed the state's economy, triggering widespread job losses and forcing billions of dollars in budget cuts.

"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 executive of the Port of Long Beach, told CalMatters, an independent news agency focusing on California, in an interview published Wednesday.

The Port of Long Beach alone supported 2,714,707 jobs across the United States, representing one out of every 77 American jobs, according to a comprehensive economic impact analysis completed on May 12 by the Port of Long Beach. In California, the port said it supported 1.1 million jobs, accounting for approximately five percent of the state's total employment.

Trade expert Paul Bingham of S&P Global Market Intelligence confirmed the unprecedented nature of the crisis during another recent interview with Cordero.

"There's nothing like this that any of us that are still active in our careers have seen before," Bingham said. "From an economics perspective, we'd have to go back over 90 years to the 1930s to find tariff levels for the United States on a trade-weighted basis close to what they are right now."

The Golden State, the strongest state in the field of economy in the country, faced a 12-billion-U.S.-dollar budget deficit, with Governor Gavin Newsom directly blaming Trump's "chaotic tariffs strategy" during his May 14 state budget announcement.

The of Port Long Beach operations had seen dramatic deterioration. According to Cordero, the port received typically 20 container vessels weekly, but the number dropped to 14 vessels two weeks into May 2025 and current schedules showed only 18 this week.

At the Port of Los Angeles, Executive Director Gene Seroka said during a media briefing that the facility had expected 80 ships to arrive in May, but 17 were subsequently canceled.

The Port of Oakland in Northern California saw a 15 percent month-over-month drop in container activity in April, according to port spokesperson Matt Davis.

The human cost also proved devastating across California's supply chain network. Part-time port workers received no hours while full-time longshoremen struggled to reach 40 hours per week, according to Gary Herrera, president of the International Longshore Workers Union Local 13, speaking at a media briefing with Long Beach officials.

Eric Tate, secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 848 representing about 8,000 truck drivers in Southern California, said in May that some drivers worked only one to two days weekly.

"When there's no work for longshoremen, there's very little work for us except gate monitoring," Luisa Gratz, president of International Longshore Workers Union Local 26, told CalMatters. "It's heartbreaking. It's putting people out of work."

California has deep economic ties with the Asia-Pacific markets. Chinese goods account for 40 percent of imports at the Port of Los Angeles, 63 percent at the Port of Long Beach, and 45 percent at the Port of Oakland, according to CalMatters' data.

The Port of Long Beach's economic impact analysis showed the facility generates 309 billion dollars in national gross domestic product (GDP) and 84.4 billion dollars in tax revenues annually.

The agricultural sector, California's economic backbone worth 59 billion dollars annually, faced significant losses. "We got hammered. We lost the whole Chinese market to Australia. At this point, I'm on the verge of losing everything," Christine Gemperle, an almond farmer of Stanislaus County, told The Los Angeles Times last month.

Almond prices crashed from 2.5 dollars per pound to 1.4 dollars per pound due to tariffs imposed by Trump during his first term in 2018, according to research from the University of California's Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics.

Furthermore, the uncertainty caused by tariff policies has resulted in substantial economic damage for businesses, said experts.

"The uncertainty here is not something because we have a virus we don't understand, it's the uncertainty around policy and what that has done to business, where there's a lack of certainty, a lack of ability to plan has imposed costs on all of us," Bingham said during his interview with Cordero.

Economic analysts have warned of broader recession risks. The International Monetary Fund slashed its U.S. and global economic growth forecasts, citing Trump's tariffs. Apollo Global Management's chief economist, Torsten Slok, forecasts a "self-inflicted recession" by summer 2025, with layoffs spreading from trucking to retail.

"You can't put the toothpaste back into the tube -- once you squeeze it, it's out," Constance Hunter, chief economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit, told The Washington Post on April 28.

On Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of International Trade invalidated Trump tariffs. In the ruling published on the court's website, "The court holds for the foregoing reasons that IEEPA does not authorize any of the Worldwide, Retaliatory, or Trafficking Tariff Orders."