The Port Newark Container Terminal was going full-out on Wednesday after President Trump’s punishing tariffs kicked in, with cranes working to unload one ship after another — as shippers, retailers and importers braced for the stiff new duties to be levied on the next load of cargo from overseas.
“It’s like the storm before the calm,” said Danny Sanchez, owner of Falcon Messenger Service, a small trucking company based in Union, NJ. “Everybody is playing the waiting game.”
He said they’ve seen a big uptick in work as the trade war has heated up, but said he fears a steep drop-off in a month or two once the full effect of the tariffs start to hit Americans consumers.
Even after Trump announced Wednesday that he was pausing his “reciprocal” tariff scheme for 90 days, local shippers and importers remained on edge over the hit they’re likely to take.
“Every business wants certainty, and there is no certainty,” Michael Shoule, Vice President of JW Hampton Jr. & Co., a 160-year old logistics company in Jamaica, Queens, told The Post.
He called the pause “a step in the right direction,” but said it remained to be seen how everything would shake out.
Trump’s new order Wednesday will raise tariffs on goods from China even higher — to 125% over the “lack of respect” from Beijing. A 10% worldwide tariff is also still going into effect.
America buys more from China than any other country in the world, except Mexico — to the tune of nearly $440 billion in 2024. All kinds of consumer goods come from China — including electronics like iPhone, toys, clothes and shoes.
Shoule said even if the proceeds from the newly imposed tariffs go to lower taxes, prices are still likely to go up “on everything we buy in the US,” and that it’s no surprise given Americans’ insatiable appetite for cheap overseas goods.
Last year, the trade deficit was $1.2 trillion — and $295 billion with China alone.
“We’ve made our own beds as Americans to a certain extent with as much as we insist upon having the lowest prices possible, whether it be Amazon, Walmart or Target. So it’s been a long time coming,” he said.
“Not to say we’ve been getting totally abused by these different countries, but there were some situations we could have advocated for ourselves better over the years and now there’s drastic measures being taken because the imbalance is so bad.”
Shoule’s JW Hampton Jr. & Co. imports a range of goods, including homemade rugs from China and Nepal, copper bars from Peru, chemicals and pharmaceuticals from India and clothing from Vietnam.
He said it’s no surprise that Trump has come out swinging with imposing the new duties, given how he’s touted tariffs dating back to his 1987 bestselling book, “The Art of the Deal.”
“He’s been saying for 30-40 years that you need shock and awe to bring people to the table. Now he’s shocked and awed people, so now let’s see who comes to the table.”
As for who he expects to feel the pain, he said cargo companies and cargo airlines bringing goods into the US will be the first impacted by the tariffs as importers put the brakes on placing new orders while they wait and see how the trade war plays out.
“Factories are holding all these goods and not shipping, eventually they’ll ship them but in the meantime they’re probably not doing a lot of production for the US. Who’s gonna place orders if they’ve already got goods over there?”
Next up to feel the tariff pain will be the truckers, Shoule said, “less shipments coming in means less business for them — and they employ a lot of people,” he said.
Sanchez said one of his biggest fears is a return to a pandemic-era bottoming out of rates for freight if the volume of imports drops dramatically.
That would put his smaller company at a disadvantage compared to large-scale firms that could make up for the loss of revenue on volume.
“There are thousands of truckers here, so you have to be competitive. If rates drop, owner-operators won’t want to move the freight because it’s not worth it for them. A job that used to pay $600 now is gonna give them maybe $400 — it’s a big drop,” he said.
“Everybody’s nervous because we just got back on our feet and it looks like we’re gonna be going back down again.”
He said some truckers have told him if rates plummet like they did during COVID they may consider leaving the industry altogether.
“Truckers that have been doing this for over 15 years, this is all they know. For them to say they might just find another profession is not as easy as they think it’s gonna be,” he said.
Sanchez said it was “great” to see Trump put the duties on pause, but said it was “ludicrous” to increase the Chinese tariffs to 125%.
“I don’t even know how it’s going to happen,” he said. “That’s a big deal for us.”
On Wednesday, The Post approached several rank-and-file members of the International Longshoremen’s Union (ILA) — whose president, Harold Daggett, has been an outspoken supporter of Trump — but they’re keeping mum on tariffs for now.
Additional reporting by Kevin Sheehan.
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