Unpopular opinion: this isn't that big of a deal for most people.
Gdp, consumer index scores, all that stuff is a measure of how much poor people are willing to spend and how hard they're working. What really matters is, can these people buy a house? Can they buy eggs?
I don't know how many of them will be all that caught up that they can't buy some disposable flip-flops on Temu anymore. We need to focus more on how hard it is to live than how hard it is to import stuff.
No single aspect of the economy exists in a vacuum. Tariffs and lower shipping volumes portend thousands of small businesses potentially going under, translating to many more thousands of people losing their jobs and incomes. This has many unforeseen knock-on effects in declining economic activity.
Are we really subscribing to Reaganistic trickle-down economic theory now? How sure are we that those imports aren't mostly just lining the pockets of the rich?
We're measuring the wrong things. We need to measure cost of living instead of how empty or full a Port is. We don't know if these two things are correlated yet.
Trickle-down is the idea that giving tax breaks or benefits to the wealthy or big corporations will eventually benefit everyone else through increased investment or job creation. What I’m talking about here is the basic flow of goods and services in an economy—when that gets disrupted, the effects hit workers and consumers directly, not eventually or indirectly.
When imports slow down, businesses have fewer goods to sell or face higher input costs. That leads to higher prices for consumers and layoffs for workers. It doesn’t just impact “the rich.”
This isn’t about trickle-down economics; it’s about how supply chains work. The impact of these tariffs will show up in lost jobs, higher prices, and reduced access to everyday goods. Those are real effects for regular people, not just abstract economic concerns.
Reduced shipping volumes immediately mean less work for truckers—thousands of people taking a hit to their income right off the bat, which in turns leads to less economic activity. This is exactly what people mean when they say no part of the economy exists in a vacuum. It’s all connected.
Yes. The port traffic data discussed in this thread is one such example.
I'm not an economist or supply chain expert myself, so I rely on actual subject-matter experts to interpret and contextualize the raw numbers for me. So far, they're all painting a pretty gloomy picture.
Good people to follow on this are CEO of Flexport Ryan Petersen [1], Jason Miller from MSU who had a great podcast with Derek Thompson [2], CEO of FreightWaves Craig Fuller [3], etc.
These things are being talked about in the context of predicting a future recession, in which case it may be very difficult for people to afford housing and other essentials.
[^1]: Of course, the whole "eggs as an economic indicator" was far right propaganda to conflate the bird flu with the broader economy
People care immensely about having a job. If tariffs mean that businesses don't hire as much or do layoffs then this is a big deal for most people. The unemployment rate doesn't even need to go up that much to have a huge effect on people's general feeling about the economy.
i agree. but i think most people are worried about second order effects (the impact of supply chains on the whole economy) rather than whether or not you can buy 3$ shoes on temu.
the people this impacts aren't buying eggs let alone houses. You and I are addicted to cheap flip flops; many poor people require cheap goods - including household and food - to survive.
Gdp, consumer index scores, all that stuff is a measure of how much poor people are willing to spend and how hard they're working. What really matters is, can these people buy a house? Can they buy eggs?
I don't know how many of them will be all that caught up that they can't buy some disposable flip-flops on Temu anymore. We need to focus more on how hard it is to live than how hard it is to import stuff.