From what I’m reading, the troubles should start to pick up now; harbors being quieter, truckers not having work, … Are any shortages noticeable yet?
ETA:
Source: https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/trump-is-a-virus
Businesses have been filling their inventories. That’s ending now. Economic pain in terms of job losses should accelerate now. It will still take up to a few weeks before inventories run empty, and the full impact hits consumers. Even a full reversal of Trumpism couldn’t prevent knock-on effects that last into next year.
I think shortages will be short-lived as companies and retailers just have to suck it up and pay more. People won’t be able to buy as much stuff, so layoffs and a recession or depression are likely, but there’s not much I can think of doing to prepare for that.
Remember when COVID supply-chain difficulties made prices shoot up? And several years after that situation peaked prices STILL haven’t gone back to normal? This gonna be like that except COMPLETELY unnecessary, brought to you entirely by MAGA. Remember it when the midterm elections come up in 2 years. That won’t be difficult cuz it will still be going on and will be even worse.
I work retail and we’ve had an onslaught of freight. Until there is ever a day when I come into work and I’m told or I see that there is nothing to stock - I’ll be concerned. Until then, what is there to prepare for?
Not yet here. Maybe a few more weeks?
Canadian here… I’m preparing by buying puts on SPY
Hehe same
Cargo container bookings are down 60%. 60%! Thats an incredible drop, and it really hasn’t even started yet.
I’m ready for a “Hot Tariff Summer.”
I’ve been on a no-purchase kick for a while now, even before HitlerPig was elected. We have become such a culture of consumerism that it had started to disgust me. I’ve embraced the “re-use, repair, re-sell, recycle” philosophy. If i need something, i try to buy it used.
I’m a guitarist, so I buy used guitars when i get a good deal, clean them up, fix them, and re-sell them at a small profit. It puts a beautiful instrument back into service, allows a poor or new musician an opportunity to have an inexpensive but quality instrument, and its music makes the world a slightly more beautiful place.
I even went on a much-needed diet (down 80 pounds so far, and still going), and decreasing my consumption, and spending less money with evil corporations, is a primary motivation.
So let the shelves be empty of cheap Chinese-made consumer goods, i don’t need them, despite how much advertising and marketing tells me i do.
The silver lining is that if tariffs become a longterm thing, people will be forced to come around to my way of thinking, and when the tariffs finally end, corporations may be surprised to find that nobody needs their shiny crap any more.
clean them up, fix them,
As someone else that does “clean up” and “fix them” for other non-instrument items, are you concerned about your supply/cost of replacement parts and supplies? Most of mine come from China.
Somewhat, mostly strings. Most of the rest is just adjustments, using tools I already have. I still have a fair stock of strings, but I was thinking of buying a bunch more to hold me over for a while.
Cleaning is also a big part, but that’s easy.
I suppose if it gets bad, and I need to buy tuners and bridges, etc., I can buy a few junk guitars, and cannibalize them for parts.
I can buy a few junk guitars, and cannibalize them for parts.
This is a future I see on my side too. The price will likely go up for our services to support this for a supply of parts though. If we get to that point, you won’t be the only one buying up junk guitars as others will be buying them for the same reason. So the price of junk guitars is going to go up too.
I expect used items of all types are going to increase - clothes, appliances, toys, etc. Goodwill and other thrift shops are about to have the biggest boom period of their history.
Curling up into the fetal position and crying in between protests.
OP’s data shows the U.S. is stocking up tremendously in April, and then maintaining year-on-year patterns after that with a slight downturn that doesn’t even compensate for April’s glut.
I haven’t seen this data before but it shows the opposite of the shortage I was expecting.
May still be a few weeks more before it’s critical then.
You seem to be misreading that.
Please correct me, then. The surprising moment came when I noticed the vertical axis is for year-on-year change and not raw tonnage.
Yes. It goes from much higher than last year to much lower.
My read was that it was much higher to prepare inventory for the tariff shock
I think the issue is you’re waiting for the negatives to be equal to the surplus of one month, when the trend (from three points of data so do with that what you will) is negative. So, ostensibly, after enough months of negatives, there will be much, much more negative than positives.
Yup that’s exactly what I was doing, and I was surprised that the negatives won’t catch up until at least 3 months which brings us to July at the earliest.
Yes, and then, or rather now, incoming shipping collapses.
Most aren’t even aware that this is coming.
A large portion of the rest are in denial. So many people can only learn through the lens of their own experience
I can’t wait to watch all the Trump-suckers loose their shit when they find out it’s Trump’s fault. If they can actually comprehend it as true, that is.
They’ll just say it’s Biden’s fault…
That is also my knee-jerk reaction, but with Tariffs it’s a pretty direct correlation to Trump now. Hopefully this will be what finally breaks him?
They’ll say it, but they won’t truly believe it. They’ll know the truth, or at least those that still possess some human awareness. There will always be those that are irredeemable, you can’t worry about them, they’re just lost.
Casual Qur’anic comment, lol. 😅
narrator: they did not
I’m far less worried about the imminent supply shock to the economy and far more worried about the long term damage to things like the FDA. We’ve decided we’re going to try to go from ~10% vegetarian to closer to 80% or 100% because I simply don’t trust that thing like meat and milk can stay safe to consume. I do have a solid amount of food in my house, and if shelves start emptying I think I’ll be okay for a bit, but that’ll pass. I can’t really leave this country, so I need to be planning for longer term problems too.
It’s quite crazy to hear that the US is about to force UK and EU to buy more chlorinated chicken, and then hear that US will stop salmonela testing while negotiating this.
We’ve decided we’re going to try to go from ~10% vegetarian to closer to 80% or 100% because I simply don’t trust that thing like meat and milk can stay safe to consume.
Farmers’ markets (or direct from a local farm/butcher) are probably your best bet for what meat you do buy, if you don’t go full veg
I have this fear that we won’t even be able to trust fruits and vegetables. The most common food contaminations in the news always seem to be unwashed lettuce and such, which makes sense because of fertilizers.
I’ve been preparing for some kind of problem with produce for a few years, I just had a gut feeling so I built a vegetable garden 3 years ago. Also have been planting fruit trees everywhere.
Ive been stockpiling canned proteins like tuna, chicken, clams, oysters, etc. even Spam. They may not be trustworthy in the future, but they are right now, so stack them up.
I can make a cheap but killer soup with a can of chicken, some ramen, and herbs, and i can even grow the herbs myself.
While the nation was functioning, meat and dairy would have been regulated by the USDA, not the FDA.
Are they gonna blow up some vessels? What doe she negative number mean? XD
The negative number means that far fewer ships are arriving in LA than at the same time last year.
I’m soupmaxxing
People don’t really know what to do, except save money, cut back on disposable spending, and watch carefully. Maybe buy some big things early like a laptop or EV now rather than wait for the shock. The big problems are a few weeks to months away.
I have read testimonies from other people who have gone through economic/political instability and hardship. What i got out of it is that prepping will help for a week to a month maybe. But after that preppers just feel dumb after that as all that work didn’t mean much long term.
The only thing that universally matters is having community ties. Unfortunately… USA aren’t very community friendly or even have the opportunity to create strong local bonds. As all community events are during work hours so only retired people part take in those.
Boomers ventured out on route 66 and never returned. One generation destroyed community for cheap large screen TVs.
During covid, having like 2 months’ worth of food was enough for me. I was able to avoid the chaos at the grocery stores, and by May of 2020, instacart had cleared up enough that I could get food delivered to me.
This is different, obviously, but having 2 months of food to avoid the initial chaos and supply shocks of a disaster is still valuable
Know your communities, people. That’s the prep you need.
“Where two eat, three can eat also.”
