President Trump said the slowness at U.S. ports due to tariffs on Chinese goods is a “good thing.”
The shipping volume at American ports is expected to take a dive in the coming weeks due to Mr. Trump’s tariffs on China.
“That means we lose less money,” he said in the Oval Office Thursday.
“When you say it slowed down, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing,” he said.
Data from Vizion, reported by CNBC earlier this week, shows a 43% week-over-week drop in containers from the week of April 21 to the week of April 28.
Mr. Trump said Thursday that China “was making over a trillion,” but didn’t clarify from what.
He said what they were making ranges from “500 billion to 1.1 trillion.”
Frankly, if we didn’t do business we would’ve been better off,” he said.
He maintained that “we’d like to see China opened up so we can compete in China and give people something they’ve never had.”
He said it would be good for “business and for friendship.”
There are currently 145% tariffs on Chinese goods.
Flexport, a supply chain management company, said in a release late last month that ocean carriers “are withdrawing capacity in the Transpacific Eastbound trade at faster rates than COVID in anticipation of reduced demand following new tariffs on shipments from China to the US.”
“Carriers are reducing capacity by deploying smaller vessels, blanking (cancellation) scheduled sailings, and even the suspension of entire service loops,” the company said.
The release noted that some weekly service loops have been completely stopped, with more similar announcements expected.
