Tariff fallout
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Thought I’d start a thread about the response to the tariffs. Price increases, cancelled orders, etc.
Amazon began to cancel some direct import orders for products sourced by vendors in China this week following Trump’s tariffs announcement, consultants told CNBC. Some vendors of home goods and kitchen accessory items had products ready for pickup by Amazon at shipping ports, only to receive a notification via an internal system, called Vendor Central, that their orders were canceled..
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Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Neel Kashkari said Friday that recent market trends show investors are moving away from the U.S. as the safest place to invest while President Donald Trump’s trade war escalates.
With Treasury yields rising and the U.S. dollar sagging against its global counterparts in recent days, the trends are running counter to what you might normally see, the central bank official said during a CNBC “Squawk Box” interview.
“Normally, when you see big tariff increases, I would have expected the dollar to go up. The fact that the dollar is going down at the same time, I think, lends some more credibility to the story of investor preferences shifting,” Kashkari said.
The 10-year Treasury yield has surged this week after Trump announced his intention to slap a 10% across-the-board tariff against U.S. trading partners and threatened to impose even harsher select levies before backing down Wednesday.
At the same time, the greenback has slumped more than 3% against a basket of global currencies, with moves potentially signifying a turn away from safe-haven U.S. assets.
“Investors around the world have viewed America as the best place to invest, and if that’s true, we will have a trade deficit. So now one of the ways that expresses itself is in lower yields across asset classes in America,” Kashkari said. “If the trade deficit is going to go down, it could be that investors are saying, OK, America no longer is the most attractive place in the world to invest, and then you would expect to see bond yields go up.”
Kashkari noted, however, that he is seeing “stresses” but not significant dislocations in market functioning.
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U.S. consumer sentiment plunged in April, the fourth consecutive month of declines, in a seemingly sharp rebuke of President Donald Trump’s trade wars that have fueled anxiety over possible job losses and rising inflation.
The preliminary reading of the University of Michigan’s closely watched consumer sentiment index, released Friday, fell 11% on a monthly basis to 50.8, the lowest since the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the past year, sentiment has tumbled 34%.
The decline was “pervasive and unanimous across age, income, education, geographic region, and political affiliation,” said Joanne Hsu, director of the survey.
https://apnews.com/article/consumer-confidence-inflation-fda8125b8b8f4929b1528046d842758f
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Collecting tariffs wasn’t going very well.
Rick Woldenberg, CEO of Learning Resources, a three-generation educational toy company which makes its products in China, said this year it was scheduled to expand with the construction of a new building, but now he is pausing expansion and reviewing his company’s financials to see where cuts can be made.
“I cannot run my business based on social media posts,” said Woldenberg. “This is making it difficult for me to make my business decisions. Instead of planning on growth, I’m talking about surviving. This trade policy can kill me and hundreds of small businesses like me. This will eliminate jobs. The banking industry and insurance industry that serve businesses both large and small will be impacted if companies go bankrupt.”
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Just read that 90% of penicillin in the US comes from China.
This will not end well.
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@AndyD said in Tariff fallout:
https://www.ft.com/content/ec96e2ed-5dd6-4c6b-92a0-1b77bf517b36
For those who don’t have an FT subscription, here’s a non-paywall version.
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Read the part of a Paul Krugman column on Substack. Do not $, so I could not read it all.
Link to video
Krugman says the likely consequences of Trump's actions are scary, as in disastrous.
“I’m at an age when remembering something right away is as good as an orgasm.”—Gloria Steinem to Julia Louis-Dreyfus on Wiser Than Me
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Trump’s Trade War Handed China a Strategic Advantage
The president signaled that the U.S. doesn’t care about its allies and trading partners—including Taiwan.In the Atlantic:
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Read the part of a Paul Krugman column on Substack. Do not $, so I could not read it all.
Link to video
Krugman says the likely consequences of Trump's actions are scary, as in disastrous.
@CHAS said in Tariff fallout:
Krugman says the likely consequences of Trump's actions are scary, as in disastrous.
Link to video
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My little essay on the end of the world trading system comes out today on the Peterson Institute for International Economics website. Check back later in the morning.
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Hong Kong's post office will stop shipping small parcels to the United States after Washington announced plans to charge tariffs on small-value parcels from the southern Chinese city, the government said Wednesday.
A government statement said Hongkong Post would not collect tariffs on behalf of Washington, and will suspend accepting non-airmail parcels containing goods destined for the U.S. on Wednesday, since items shipped by sea take more time. It will accept airmail parcels until April 27.
"For sending items to the US, the public in Hong Kong should be prepared to pay exorbitant and unreasonable fees due to the U.S.'s unreasonable and bullying acts," the government wrote.
https://www.npr.org/2025/04/16/nx-s1-5366368/hong-kong-post-office-tariffs
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Chinese freight ship bookings plummet.
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You might expect American winemakers to be popping bottles of California sparkling wine these days. With President Trump's tariffs on the European Union, U.S.-made wine now has a greater price advantage over Italian prosecco and French Champagne.
This is a classic case that protectionists make for tariffs: They help domestic producers.
But the American winemakers we spoke with are more sour than bubbly about Trump's tariffs.
"To me, it's awful. There's no upside," said Adolfo Hernandez, owner and winemaker at Monroy Wines in Sonoma County, Calif.
So, why aren't tariffs a big win for American winemakers? We spoke to a bunch of them around the United States, and what they told us challenges the assumption that tariffs will help domestic industries.
