COMMUNITY United States Politics Thread: Trump's Second Term

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Tariffs Are Bad, But Trump's New Port Fees Are Also Shaping Up To Be A Disaster - Jalopnik

Republicans' current plan is to begin charging port fees of as much as $1.5 million on Chinese-built cargo ships at every port of call.
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For obvious reasons, Trump's tariffs have grabbed a ton of attention lately. Turning the entire global economy on its head and ceding the U.S.'s position as a global economic leader tends to do that. As bad as tariffs are, though, they aren't the only idea Trump has to make everything you buy even more expensive. While we were focused on what cars would disappear from the U.S. market now that they're no longer affordable, Trump decided to also hit Chinese-built cargo ships with massive port fees. If those port fees go into effect as planned, expect shipping delays that will make the COVID era sound fun in comparison.

As Reuters reported in late March, Republicans' current plan is to begin charging port fees of as much as $1.5 million on Chinese-built cargo ships at every port of call. They aren't based on the value of the cargo that's offloaded at each port, either, so while a ship that drops all its cargo at the Port of Los Angeles would pay a single port fee, a ship planning to stop at multiple U.S. ports would be charged the same fee at each stop. It's a move that's been pitched as a way to revitalize the U.S. shipping industry, but the Jones Act didn't work, and it's unlikely this will, as well.
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To avoid stacking port fees, shipping companies will most likely begin avoiding smaller ports, and with less work to do, those ports will begin cutting jobs. Meanwhile, major ports will see massive increases in traffic, leading to long delays as demand overwhelms capacity. Some shipping companies may redirect their ships to Canada or Mexico and rely on trucks to bring their goods into the U.S., too. That would take some of the pressure off the major ports, but even assuming there are enough trucks to move product, that could easily create a logjam at the border, too.

As maritime news site gCaptain reports, the shipping industry is already preparing for the worst. At the Connecticut Maritime Association's annual meeting last week, Port of New York and New Jersey port director Bethann Rooney said companies redirecting ships to major U.S. ports "would absolutely crush us" and that the ensuing delays "would be far worse than we saw on the West Coast during the (COVID-19) pandemic." And as Morten Arntzen, a senior advisor to Macquarie Bank, told gCaptain, the shipping industry is unlikely to make the massive changes Trump, Republicans and even some Democrats are hoping for. Instead, Arntzen said they're more likely to gamble that, come 2029, the new president will simply reverse the new rules.
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The Trump administration also appears to be operating under the assumption that shipping companies will still service U.S. ports. Another recent gCaptain article, however, shows that isn't exactly guaranteed. They quote Genco Shipping & Trading Ltd. CEO John Wobensmith, who said in a recent interview on Bloomberg Television that the company currently owns zero U.S.-built ships but doesn't even really need U.S. business. "What we are doing is we will either position our ships elsewhere, there's plenty of global trade," Wobensmith told Bloomberg, adding that only about 10 percent of its revenue comes from the U.S.

Like tariffs, it won't be other countries or even the shipping company that ultimately pays for the higher cost and longer shipping times the new rules will impose. Instead, it'll be the consumers. As Wobensmith put it, "The other way to handle this is passing through to the end user," while also claiming freight rates "will go up, no matter what." In turn, that will hurt U.S. farm owners who export a large percentage of their crops. Wobensmith said soy, especially, is in trouble since, between higher tariffs from countries responding to the U.S.'s trade war and higher freight rates, their prices will become "uncompetitive in the world market, so their exports will come almost to a grinding halt.

That does sound bad, but at least the farm owners can likely expect some sort of relief from Republicans. The people forced to pay even higher prices for products they have to wait even longer to receive won't get a bailout, though, nor will the workers who lose their jobs because shipping no longer goes through smaller ports.
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757'sFinest said:
Hilary and Harris both are way more qualified at handling political issues than trump has ever been.....I said it in 2016 and I said it in this past election America doesn't want a female president and it shows
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People used the qualifications attack against Obama too and he still won not because he was a man but because he was able to get people excited and win them over. Nobody liked Hilary to begin with and then she went around saying elitist shit, calling a segment of the black male population "super predators," getting caught up in security scandals. perpetuating feminist lies like the 77 cent wage gap, etc... Which of those things were going to win the election for her? Kamala didn't have a full campaign cycle, had the stigma of being a DEI hire because Joe Biden basically said he chose her for DEI reasons, kept saying she wasn't going to do things different from Biden even in cases where people really wanted her to do things different from Biden, and was out campaigning with Republicans. Again, which of those things were going to win the election for her?

I'm not saying that misogynists don't exist and that there aren't people that voted against her just because she's a woman. But it's stupid to keep trying to boil down the losses of bad candidates like Hillary or bad campaigns like Harris had to one or two things. If people keep doing that, the Dems are going to keep losing because they will constantly make the same mistakes.
 
We need to never forget these people
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The Lonious Monk said:
People used the qualifications attack against Obama too and he still won not because he was a man but because he was able to get people excited and win them over. Nobody liked Hilary to begin with and then she went around saying elitist shit, calling a segment of the black male population "super predators," getting caught up in security scandals. perpetuating feminist lies like the 77 cent wage gap, etc... Which of those things were going to win the election for her? Kamala didn't have a full campaign cycle, had the stigma of being a DEI hire because Joe Biden basically said he chose her for DEI reasons, kept saying she wasn't going to do things different from Biden even in cases where people really wanted her to do things different from Biden, and was out campaigning with Republicans. Again, which of those things were going to win the election for her?

I'm not saying that misogynists don't exist and that there aren't people that voted against her just because she's a woman. But it's stupid to keep trying to boil down the losses of bad candidates like Hillary or bad campaigns like Harris had to one or two things. If people keep doing that, the Dems are going to keep losing because they will constantly make the same mistakes.
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Obama was state senator before he was a president.....trump ain't did shit to be taken serious as a presidential candidate....Hillary won the popular vote but nobody liked her?.....until it happens that narrative of America not wanting a woman as a president will stick for a long time
 
The Lonious Monk said:
People used the qualifications attack against Obama too and he still won not because he was a man but because he was able to get people excited and win them over. Nobody liked Hilary to begin with and then she went around saying elitist shit, calling a segment of the black male population "super predators," getting caught up in security scandals. perpetuating feminist lies like the 77 cent wage gap, etc... Which of those things were going to win the election for her? Kamala didn't have a full campaign cycle, had the stigma of being a DEI hire because Joe Biden basically said he chose her for DEI reasons, kept saying she wasn't going to do things different from Biden even in cases where people really wanted her to do things different from Biden, and was out campaigning with Republicans. Again, which of those things were going to win the election for her?

I'm not saying that misogynists don't exist and that there aren't people that voted against her just because she's a woman. But it's stupid to keep trying to boil down the losses of bad candidates like Hillary or bad campaigns like Harris had to one or two things. If people keep doing that, the Dems are going to keep losing because they will constantly make the same mistakes.
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Trump shown during both campaigns and during his presidency’s he was far worse than both of them.

Trump was saying and doing shit during both campaign(especially this last campaign) that would’ve killed anyone’s campaign prior to 2016.

It’s not stretch that misogyny played a large role in them both losing.
 
757'sFinest said:
Obama was state senator before he was a president.....trump ain't did shit to be taken serious as a presidential candidate....Hillary won the popular vote but nobody liked her?.....until it happens that narrative of America not wanting a woman as a president will stick for a long time
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I'm not sure what your point is. Being the most qualified has never been the bar for the presidency. We've put a bunch of war heroes who didn't know shit about politics into the office because people like them. That's what it comes down to. And yes, Hillary won the popular vote. That doesn't mean she was liked. It meant the majority of the country recognized that she was better for the job than Trump. In fact, that blows up your whole argument about America not wanting a woman president. By your own admission, more people in the country voted for Hillary than voted for Trump. Even with her being a bad candidate, she lost because of the Electoral College, not because most of the country didn't want her in office.

JAG said:
Trump shown during both campaigns and during his presidency’s he was far worse than both of them.

Trump was saying and doing shit during both campaign(especially this last campaign) that would’ve killed anyone’s campaign prior to 2016.

It’s not stretch that misogyny played a large role in them both losing.
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I'm not saying misogyny didn't play any part. I'm saying that people boiling it down to that are being very simplistic and naive in their thinking. There are way too many reasons Trump won to just brush it off as misogyny. First of all, he's got a built in cult that is more loyal to him than Dem voters are to any candidate on the left. The Reps went on gerrymandering sprees prior to both elections Trump won. In this past election, Reps got millions of vote from Dem voters thrown out over bullshit. All of this in addition to Harris not running a particularly good campaign.

There is a lot of stuff to fix. If people just chalk up those losses to misogyny, then none of that shit will be addressed and the Dems will just keep on losing.
 
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