A Couple Of Bucks More
Donald Trump's trade war is on the brink of going from bad to worse. Up until now, American consumers have seen the stock market tank (and go through wild swings) and are beginning to see higher prices for some of the things they buy. But all that's about to go into overdrive, as the shock to the global trading system works its way down all of the supply chains. The next big phase of this may wind up being empty shelves in the stores -- which is going to be a monumental psychological shock to consumers.
Americans aren't generally very good at sacrifice. We do try to pull together when necessary, but usually for an external reason: A big natural disaster. The 9/11 attacks. A war. A global pandemic. But even then there are limits to what Americans will put up with (as evidenced by the politicization of COVID-19 protection measures, to name just one example). When George W. Bush announced a global war on terrorism after the 9/11 attacks, he pointedly did not call for any sacrifice from his fellow Americans -- he told them to go shopping, instead.
But this time around the catastrophe is internal. It was caused by one man. And he seems awfully blasé and dismissive about it. After all, he won't personally be feeling the effects, so why should anyone else get upset?
Here is what is coming down the pike for the American economy:
While high tariffs on Chinese products have been in place since early April, the availability of Chinese products and the price that consumers pay for them has not changed that much. But some companies are now starting to raise their prices. And experts say that the effects will become more and more obvious in the coming weeks, as a tidal wave of change stemming from canceled orders in Chinese factories works its way around the world to the United States.
The number of massive container ships carrying metal boxes of toys, furniture and other products departing China for the United States has plummeted by about a third this month.
The reason consumers haven't felt many of the effects yet is because it takes 20 to 40 days for a container ship to travel across the Pacific Ocean. It then takes another one to 10 days for Chinese goods to make their way by train or truck to various cities around the country, economists at Apollo Global Management wrote in a recent report. That means that the higher tariffs on China that went into effect at the beginning of April are just starting to result in a drop in the number of ships arriving at American ports, a trend that should intensify.
By late May or early June, consumers could start to see some empty shelves, and layoffs could occur for retailers and logistics industries. The major effects on the U.S. economy of shutting down trade with China will start to become apparent in the summer of 2025, when the United States might slip into a recession, said Torsten Slok, an economist at Apollo.
"U.S. consumers will within a few weeks see empty shelves in clothing stores, toy stores, hardware stores and retail drugstores, and higher prices of the goods that still are on the shelves," he said.
Molson Hart, the chief executive of Viahart, a toy company, wrote on X: "It's almost like we're speeding towards a brick wall but the driver of the car doesn't see it yet. By the time he does, it'll be too late to hit the brakes."
Estimates vary as to when all of this is going to take place. It depends on when factory orders in China were cancelled, how long it takes to get across the Pacific Ocean, how far down the falloff in orders goes, and how much American corporations stocked up in anticipation of the trade war. But sooner or later even the most well-stocked warehouses will be emptied. Sooner or later, empty shelves in the stores will appear if nothing changes in the meantime.
Toys are getting a lot of media attention, because it is such an obvious example to use. The vast, vast majority of toys sold in America are made in China. But it goes far beyond toys. The impacts are going to be felt in many sectors of the economy, some worse than others (depending on how dependent each sector is on Chinese goods). Clothing and shoes will be hit hard. Back-to-school supplies will too. Fireworks are almost entirely Chinese-produced. And a whole lot of what hardware stores sell is made in China as well. Empty shelves could be in the near future for any or all of them -- and hundreds of other products as well.
As I said, the effects will be both economic (either paying higher prices or not being able to buy what you need) as well as psychological. Empty shelves are, to be blunt, shocking to Americans. The last two times this happened were both a function of disease -- the shortage of eggs caused by the bird flu virus and the widespread shortages (anyone else remember standing in line to buy toilet paper?) of the COVID era. But this time there'll be no external reason why it is happening for people to blame.
Empty shelves always make for scary stories on the news. A camera pans over a store's aisle showing big huge gaps in the products on the shelves, and the commentary pretty much writes itself: "Americans are shocked to see empty shelves at their local stores!"
That's what's coming, in the very near future. It's already happening in small businesses, since they can't afford to fill up a warehouse with six months' worth of goods to sell. They had no means to stock up before the tariffs hit, and their choice now is a stark one indeed: stop ordering products from China to put on their shelves (and go out of business because they don't have anything to sell); order the products anyway and raise the prices to over twice what they used to charge (and go out of business because nobody is going to buy it for that insane price); or order the products anyway and sell them for the old prices (and go out of business heavily in debt, for losing so much money at the end). You'll note that none of those choices include weathering the storm somehow and things working out in the end. This is the situation now being faced by independent toy stores and discount clothing stores and shoe stores and drugstores and local hardware stores and appliance stores and too many others to even mention. And this is before it filters out to the corporate big-box stores. When it hits them, it's going to be unavoidable for any American shopper. Empty shelves will become the biggest economic story of the year on the news.
Donald Trump doesn't seem especially worried about any of this. Here's how he answered the issue yesterday:
You know, somebody said, "Oh, the shelves are going to be open." Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know? And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.
Again, so far the focus is on toys and what this could all mean for the Christmas shopping season. But that's an amazing amount of callousness from Trump, you've got to admit. "Hey kiddies, you've got to sacrifice and be happy with less on Christmas morning, and maybe it'll cost your parents a couple of bucks more -- but be of good cheer knowing you're doing it all to make China blink in my trade war!" That is not exactly going to fly with the public (that's my humble guess, at any rate).
This could still largely be avoided. Team Trump is counting on being able to announce some trade deals soon, and that will probably make Wall Street happy for a while. But absent a trade deal with China, it won't matter all that much to the biggest supply chains. Even with a brand-new trade deal in place with Japan or India, the Chinese goods are still going to have a 145 percent tariff on them.
There's the prospect of a lawsuit wiping out Trump's tariffs too. The groups suing are arguing that there was no actual emergency and thus Trump applied the tariffs illegally in the first place. If a judge (or a number of them) agrees, they could halt the tariffs for the time being.
Trump could also be talked into excluding certain businesses or even whole business sectors from these insanely-high tariffs. Toys may be the first on this list, since that's where the media attention is now focusing. It's also being proposed that small businesses be exempt, but that would be trickier to actually implement. Either way, Trump has been open to carving out certain things from his grandiose tariff announcements when enough CEOs complain to him, so this is a real possibility.
Or Trump could back down in a big way. Ideally for the White House (in order to save face), this would involve both countries announcing a rollback on their tariff rates simultaneously, as a "measure of good faith" that negotiations were going to happen soon. Actually having negotiations underway would also be somewhat of a balm to the economy. But this would have to be a gigantic step backwards for Trump, since it's estimated that any tariff of 50 percent or more would still have the practical effect of an embargo between the two countries. Even at 50 percent, it'd be tough for any retailers to actually make money -- and that would involve Trump pulling back by almost 100 percent on his current tariff rate (a smaller rollback seems more likely, to put it another way).
Any of these options would have to happen extremely quickly for them to be enough to solve the problem of empty shelves in the near future. When a supply chain breaks down, you can't just turn it back on again with the flip of a switch. There's still that unavoidable one-to-two-month lag time built in. But the big stores could probably survive if they knew they could restock at a reasonable price, and some of the small businesses could also survive the gap (perhaps by just closing their store for a few months until their shelves were full again, which would be rough but still better than bankruptcy).
It's still a long way until Christmas. The prospect of empty toy store shelves isn't going to be seen as critical yet. Even so, Trump's callous disregard of the prospect of empty shelves -- for a lot of other sectors than just toys -- is pretty tone-deaf, you've got to admit. If he continues to brush off the bare shelves American consumers start to see with their bare eyes, he's going to seem woefully out of touch. Because dismissively sneering about people having to pay "a couple of bucks more" isn't exactly "I feel your pain."
-- Chris Weigant
Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant
That is not exactly going to fly with the public
Who do you mean when you say "public"? The MAGA cult is definitely prepared to drink that Flavor-Aid.
I couldn’t care less if they raise prices . . . I hope they raise their prices. - Fat Donny (3/29/25)
How does a 145% Trump Tax amount to a couple of bucks? We're hearing dementia lies at levels that nobody has ever seen before. Donny Two Dolls says China will "eat" his tariffs. It seems very unlikely to me that China will "eat" $145 to sell somebody something worth $100. Only somebody as idiotic about business as the Orange Casino Bankruptor would ever speak words so stupid into a microphone.
You conclude that Trump could dodge some of this oncoming brick wall by exempting some industries or sectors; or that he could announce mutually reduced tariff rates by both parties, as a result of negotiations.
Both of these seem half-cocked. Not that you're wrong in speculating like this. But both those 'solutions' or dodges demand that the Republican administration actually decide just what the higher tariffs are supposed to be for. What is their actual purpose? is a question to which there is no currently agreed-on answer.
I've read innumerable commentaries on this in the past few months. The so-called tariff policy makes no sense.
It can't be to encourage a domestic rebuilding of our manufacturing capability, a process that takes years during which the tariffs would have to stay high, if they are open to immediate lowering by negotiation to avoid the dreaded empty shelves. No business would risk major capital investments in factories if the tariffs are meant to be temporary negotiating tools.
Likewise, it can't be to raise federal income to offset tax cuts, if the tariffed products are going to be produced domestically; once that happens (in a few years), there will be no imports of those products and thus no income from the tariffs on the non-existent imports.
So exempting sectors from the tariffs, or mutually lowering them in the next few months, if he does those things to avoid public outrage at empty shelves, guts the entire premise of the tariffs: rebuilding domestic production in the next decade or so OR increasing federal income at the customs house to offset losses at the IRS due to tax cuts.
The shelves are going to be empty - you're pretty convincing on that point. And we're not going to like it - not even the MAGA cult, I think, despite John from Cens's acute comment above.
But Trump has no way out, I think, that doesn't make him and his staff and his party look even more ignorant, callous, privileged, and out-of-touch than they already do. Looking towards that Democratic sweep of the House and Senate in 2026, even more than ever.
During the presidential campaign, Short Fingers would say that the financial markets were flying high because he was going to win the election. Now that he's been prez for 100 days and the markets have cratered since he declared April 2nd Ruination Day *, he says it's Biden's fault as if nobody's even heard of the Trump Taxes. Good luck with this GOP.
* He didn't do it on April 1st because he believed that people would think he was a fool.
Facts are stupid things - Ronnie Raygun
[4] John M
It should be obvious by now that this tariff insanity is a mob-style shakedown. Look what Big Orange extracted from Viet Nam! For himself.
It's always about the grift
. . . not to mention the Ukraine shakedown.
it's like watching a train wreck in slow motion.
But this time around the catastrophe is internal. It was caused by one man.
Oh, I suppose you could blame "one man," but if the spineless GOP jellyfish in Congress wanted to do something about the wannabe king (rather than cower in fear), they could obviously do something about it... so blame where blame is due on those Republiclowns also.
Having said that, I do think Congress will eventually do something about it; I'm just wondering how long it'll take (enough of) them to decide whether or not they'll take the lifeboats or go down by the head in the Trumptanic.
Donald Trump's trade war is on the brink of going from bad to worse.
Not factually accurate. China blinked.. :D
One really has to congratulate PRESIDENT Trump for his MASTERFUL use of tariffs to secure better trade deals for America...
First, PRESIDENT Trump used tariffs as a tactical weapon to make great deals with other countries, gathered those countries to our side and then isolated China
That bold strategy has paid off forcing China to blink first in this high-stakes trade war. Beijing’s reported rollback of its punishing 125% retaliatory tariffs on select U.S. imports—like medical equipment, ethane, and aircraft leasing fees—signals a potential truce, proved that PRESIDENT Trump's tough stance worked flawlessly..
By carving out key electronics from PRESIDENTTrump's tariff list, he showed strategic flexibility, prompting China to mirror exemptions on semiconductors and other goods. The mutual pragmatism, with U.S. shipments slipping through untaxed and Asian markets rallying, underscores that PRESIDENT Trump literally wrote on THE ART OF THE DEAL. The yuan’s recovery and bullish investor sentiment further affirmed PRESIDENT Trump's economic leverage strategy.
While China demands full U.S. tariff relief before formal talks, their actions (collecting customs codes for broader exemptions) reveal they’re feeling the pressure.
PRESIDENT Trump has outmaneuvered China, as China is DESPERATE to scramble about to protect their economy while PRESIDENT Trump holds firm.
Granted, this isn’t a full resolution. The Trade War with China is still ongoing but it is definitely a clear win for PRESIDENT Trump and America.
Backchannel moves are showing BOTH sides are interdependent. PRESIDENT Trump's direct outreach to Xi, though ignored, keeps the heat on China.
Americans are reaping the benefits of PRESIDENT Trump's AMERICA FIRST policies and proving PRESIDENT Trump and America is on the winning side of this trade battle.
PRESIDENT Trump was wrong about one point though.. He said that we would get tired of winning.. :D
I am DEFINITELY not tired of winning yet.. :D
More TDS chatbot troll spam. Red card please.
Yep, more TDS chatbot troll spam indeed.
Red card already — you know cho’mo cain’t help hisself!
Chris are you going to draw the line at AI-generated parallel universe talking points polluting Weigantia?
It’s May. Are you still going to update this website to include a blocking feature?
JFC...
Quit being a jerk, dood..
Hay, I asked you before, but ya never answered..
Why is it that you were so COMPLETELY and UTTERLY **WRONG** about the election and Headboard Harris..
I mean, it was completely obvious that PRESIDENT Trump would win...
COMPLETELY OBVIOUS...
What happened???
it's pretty hard to find any news outlets, even conservative ones, who can see a silver lining in the current state of trade on the US side. times of india maybe?
it's pretty hard to find any news outlets, even conservative ones, who can see a silver lining in the current state of trade on the US side. times of india maybe?
Yep I agree..If one doesn't WANT to look at or accept the facts and the objective reality, it's very difficult for anyone to find it..
PRESIDENT Trump’s bold tariffs forced China to consider trade talks, with $40B in U.S. goods exempted. Beijing’s economic slump proves that PRESIDENT Trump’s tariff-them-to-hell strategy is effective, and has positioned the US for stronger trade deals.
China Hints at Possible Thaw With US in Weighing Trade Talks
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-02/china-says-it-s-evaluating-possible-us-talks-on-trade
Woke progressive Democrats have lost HUGE millions and millions of black American voters.. :D
PRESIDENT Trump’s enduring support among black American voters, as highlighted by CNN’s April 2025 interviews, underscores his ability to connect with a demographic woke progressive Democrats assumed was theirs.
Three Black voters, Kyasia Kraft, Detra German, and Seth Dawkins, told CNN's Van Jones they’d “one thousand percent” vote for Trump again, citing PRESIDENT Trump's effective policies over party loyalty.
Kraft, flipping from 2016’s anti-Trump vote, is fed up with Black communities’ complaints without action, seeing Trump as a catalyst for change.
German, also a 2016 Clinton voter, values Trump’s results enough to consider him over rigid Democratic allegiance.
Dawkins, from a “super Democratic” family, backs Trump’s border security, frustrated that illegal immigrants receive benefits over citizens.
PRESIDENT Trump’s border policy resonates strongly, slashing illegal crossings to 7,180 in March 2025, per U.S. Customs and Border Protection, compared to Biden’s 155,000 monthly average.
Dawkins, informed by TikTok, sees this as prioritizing Americans, a sentiment echoing broader black American voter concerns about resource allocation. These voters aren’t blind loyalists. They’re pragmatic, drawn to PRESIDENT Trump’s tangible outcomes—economic focus, border control, over woke progressive Democrat platitudes.
Their shift reflects a rejection of the woke progressive Democrats' assumption that black voters are monolithic and will always support Democrats.
PRESIDENT Trump’s appeal lies in addressing real issues, not pandering, proving he’s earning the trust where Democrats faltered. Black Americans are voting with their eyes open, and PRESIDENT Trump is winning them over.
John From Censornati | MtnCaddy
11|12
More TDS chatbot troll spam. Red card please.
Yep, more TDS chatbot troll spam indeed.
I do see the trolling of this forum continues with the BLOWHARD Trump shit postings unabated despite the multiple warnings. These strokes definitely meet the definition of continuing to be a jerk so perhaps CW will finally clue in.
Just testing the new stuff that JL taught me.. AND following CW's edict to be more like we were in 2006-2015...
I apologize for not being around so much... I have started the Academy and that is taking a LOT of my time.. Plus I am STILL working in the COMM Center AND trying to get our yard ready for a FLORIDA Summer. :D
Here is what I have been working on.. :D
And, of course, the puppy can't resist jumping in..
OK So, let's see if this works.. :D
OK I think we're good..
It's Fri night and I just got paid!!! :D It's AMAZING how much Law Enforcement gets paid these days!!!
Time to spend it on my lovely wife of 43 years...
Good night ya'all.. :D
[19] Spam
what's spammy about 19? by my count the only posts that appear to violate cw's rules are 10 and 17.
what's spammy about 19?
Yer kidding, right?? You just HAVE to know that the Weigantian Trolls don't really care about facts or objective reality.. :eyeroll:
It's just their knee jerk reaction because they get their asses handed to them every time I comment. :D
by my count the only posts that appear to violate cw's rules are 10 and 17.
What's spammy about 10 and 17??
Ahh yes. Your definition of "spam" means anything good about PRESIDENT Trump that you can't refute with facts or objective reality..
:eyeroll:
I have reduced my postings from dozens of comments PER DAY to a handful of comments PER WEEK..
And yet, ya'all STILL piss and moan and whine and cry..
How many more facts do you need before you comprehend the objective reality of the here and now..
The Weigantian Trolls simply hate me.. My presence here is an affront to their hysterical Trump/America hate and PTDS...
I could post a couple times a MONTH and these trolls will STILL hysterically whine and cry and stamp their feet..
Welcome to Weigantia 2025... :D
by my count the only posts that appear to violate cw's rules are 10 and 17.
Further, the ONLY rule that CW has given me in the here and now is "Don't be a jerk."
None of the comments I have made since then had absolutely NO "jerk" in them whatsoever..
Further, even if we DO go back to all the rules that CW has put down (some of which conflicted with other rules) 10 and 17 did not violate ANY of CW's rules for me..
So, no matter how ya slice it, JL... Yer wrong...
yes, that's the rule i was referring to.
Oh, and to nyp on your [4] back on the thread 'Pentagon Meltdown', 4/21/25:
Looking into it, we find that the 'old Turkish proverb' about the clown and the palace was coined by the English journalist Elizabeth Bangs at 8:36 AM on January 23, 2022.
She was rewriting the actual Turkish/ Circassian proverb, ‘When cattle go into a palace they don’t become the king, but the palace becomes a barn’ [okuz saraya cikinca kral olmaz, ama saray ahir olur] for British consumption as a commentary on the Boris Johnson government of the UK.
As she writes, she had no idea her clever composition would go viral as the "old Turkish proverb" to the point where it is accepted worldwide as eternal folk wisdom.
Source: Elizabeth Bangs on her Wordpress blog, 12/31/2022.
[Sorry for the late reply but I could not get this to post on that thread. I'll try this one.]
was it a misquote or an intentional adaptation?
As I understand it, she took the genuine Turkish proverb about the cattle and the barn, and personalized it by substituting a clown for the cattle and a circus for the barn. Her goal was to mock Boris Johnson as being a clown - a more pointed gag than likening him to a herd of cattle.
So, an intentional adaptation - but such a good one, and so much more usable for modern political satire, that the media seized on it without ever researching it to see where she'd found this so-called Turkish proverb.
Her column on it (Dec. 31, 2022, eleven months after she published the gag) is quite ironic and funny.
https://elizabethbangs.wordpress.com/2022/12/31/when-is-an-old-turkish-proverb-not-an-old-turkish-proverb/
I found that the reason my post didn't upload two weeks ago is that I quoted Bangs' post which used correct Turkish script for the quote of the actual proverb about the cattle. Well, I guess Chris's server or host doesn't like Turkish script because I was repeatedly rejected.
Finally, today, I substituted Roman letters for the Turkish ones, and bingo, here we are, discussing one of my favorite subjects: misquotes in social media.
You know: As Abraham Lincoln once said, "don't believe everything you read on the internet."
Or, Thomas Jefferson waxing wise on economic inflation, a term that didn't exist in the economic sense in his lifetime. Etc., etc.
nypoet22
21
what's spammy about 19?
How many times do you think it is appropriate to post a repetitive personal comment on a political chat board? That spam was posted three times in four minutes in what could only be considered intentionally spamming the forum in search of attention.
[ Friday, May 2nd, 2025 at 16:44 ]
[ Friday, May 2nd, 2025 at 16:45 ]
[ Friday, May 2nd, 2025 at 16:48 ]
by my count the only posts that appear to violate cw's rules are 10 and 17.
By my count, your count is (at least) missing the three personal comments posted intentionally in a span of four minutes that are nothing if not spamming the political forum.
Michale
22
Yer kidding, right?? You just HAVE to know that the Weigantian Trolls don't really care about facts or objective reality.. :eyeroll:
Interesting that you'd post your personal comments three times in a span of four minutes on another man's political blog yet refer to anyone else as a "troll." But, hey, it got you the attention for which you troll.
It's just their knee jerk reaction because they get their asses handed to them every time I comment. :D
The only ass you're kicking is your own, but I definitely like your description of "knee jerk," which reminds that CW aptly described you as a jerk.
Michale
23
I have reduced my postings from dozens of comments PER DAY to a handful of comments PER WEEK..
And yet, you're still acting like a "jerk" in those posts.
And yet, ya'all STILL piss and moan and whine and cry..
Provably incorrect. In fact, the majority on the forum generally ignores you; hence, you're still trolling them with the same stale repetitive bullshit as per your usual. Your [13] above is your routine trolling BS toward a poster who generally ignores your mewling whining childish trolling toward him personally... later, rinse, repeat... #SSDD
How many more facts do you need before you comprehend the objective reality of the here and now..
In the "here and now," you still seem to have a problem with the simple definition of "facts," and obviously your inability to punctuate is as ever-present as always. In the "here and now," questions are punctuated with "?" and not double periods. Any questions?
The Weigantian Trolls simply hate me.. My presence here is an affront to their hysterical Trump/America hate and PTDS...
In the "here and now," you demonstrably ARE the "Troll" because only a "Troll" would continue the asinine exercise of routinely and continually attempting to put words in everyone else's mouths. And while I won't attempt to speak for everyone else like a "Troll" would do, I will say that hate obviously requires passion, and I've got none for you; however, I definitely would wager that those who routinely and regularly ignore you have no passion for you either.
I could post a couple times a MONTH and these trolls will STILL hysterically whine and cry and stamp their feet..
Meanwhile, you're hysterically posting the same repetitive insults over and over ad nauseam... so... not even a good "Troll."
@kick,
How many times do you think it is appropriate to post a repetitive personal comment on a political chat board? That spam was posted three times in four minutes in what could only be considered intentionally spamming the forum in search of attention.
those re-posts don't seem malicious, just careless; i am much more willing to forgive that than the others - which aside from the intentionally obnoxious ALLCAPSBOLDFACE, are quite obviously copy-paraphrased from outside opinion pieces - which means he's intentionally weaseling around CW's directive not to copy more than 2 paragraphs from elsewhere, and provide a link to it when he does so. might as well paste a photo of a thesaurus on those.
i for one do feel profoundly sad about this. he's obviously trying to tone it down, because there's a lot less of it than before, with somewhat less offensive insults. but based on my read of where CW is at right now, i'm concerned that might not be sufficient to avoid the hard red. i'm sure some folks will be thrilled if that's the case, but i'm just sorta resigned to the inevitable.
JL