Container ships packed with seven stories’ worth of Chinese goods are currently docked at the Port of Oakland, where importers are rushing to off-load goods amid an escalating trade war between the world’s two largest economies.
Soon after returning to the White House on Jan. 20, President Donald Trump ordered cabinet officials to “assess the unlawful migration and fentanyl flows” from China, Mexico and Canada. He followed that decision on Feb. 1, announcing the first set of sweeping 10% tariffs on China — by far the Port’s largest importer.
Trump then announced on Feb. 27 that the United States would double down with an additional 10% tax on imports from China that would begin on March 4. China announced retaliatory tariffs to go into effect on April 4, igniting a stock market sell-off and anxiety about the potential for a recession of the American economy.
Imports from China make up 48% of all goods that come into the Oakland Port, and China receives 7% of all exports departing from it, behind only Japan and South Korea, according to port officials.
Trump’s tariffs are expected to have broad effects across the Bay Area as 99% of all containerized goods in Northern California come through the Port of Oakland, which supports $174 billion in annual economic activity. More than 2 million containers were processed by the port in 2023, according to port statistics.
Now, port officials are bracing for those impacts as major shipping companies flooded harbors around the country earlier this year in an attempt to beat the tariffs.
“When the threat of the tariffs was coming, there was quite a bit of cargo that advanced and moved forward toward the end of the year and into January. We have not continued to see that,” said Bryan Brandes, maritime director for the Port of Oakland. “If (tariffs) go through to the level that’s been talked about, there could be some real concerns.”
The president’s use of tariffs has been an effort to restore American manufacturing jobs and protect key industries, according to UC Berkeley associate professor of business and public policy Matilde Bombardini, who studies international trade and comparative advantages.
“The decline in manufacturing was one of the primary sources of discontent among lower- and middle-class Americans,” Bombaridini said. “Tariffs could in principle … protect from foreign competition, and then you could increase manufacturing jobs at home.”
Some industries have announced new investments in their U.S. facilities. On March 3, the French shipping and logistics company CMA-CGM announced a $20 billion investment in America’s maritime supply chain services over the next four years and expects to create 10,000 jobs.
But the sheer breadth of tariffs on all goods from China has stoked concern about reigniting inflation that could “come at the cost of consumers,” Bombardini said. While tariffs on China in 2018 targeted emerging markets such as electric vehicles, those tariffs’ costs for consumers were offset by an appreciation of the U.S. dollar. The latest tariffs have come during a vastly different economic landscape as the Federal Reserve attempts to bring down inflation, she said.
“Tariffs could be a big, big obstacle to bringing down inflation back to 2%, and we’re already seeing an uptick,” Bombardini said, noting that inflation had leveled out at 3.1% at the end of 2024. “It’s a very delicate moment.”
That uncertainty was obvious among leaders at the Trans Pacific Maritime Conference in Long Beach earlier this month, where Brandes and other port executives worried about retaliatory tariffs being used to “inflict some pain” on American industries, he said. China imposed a 15% tariff on U.S. chicken, wheat, corn on Monday, in addition to a 10% tariff on soybeans, pork, beef and fruit.
“It has not affected us yet, but it will,” Brandes said on Tuesday, noting the swath of agricultural goods from California’s Central Valley, wine from Sonoma and Napa and meat products from the Midwest are all transported through the Port of Oakland. “Depending on the severity of it … the (producers) may let the product rot on the vines, literally.”
Bombardini said tariffs have been justifiably used to protect nascent industries like American steel in the 1870s or Silicon Valley’s A.I. chip manufacturers in recent years. But tariffs placed on long-standing industries such as agriculture, which compete in international markets, could cause America’s trading partners to seek alternatives to products labeled “Made in the USA,” she said.
These new tariffs also hamper the Port of Oakland’s ability to compete with other U.S. ports in the South and on the East Coast, which are closer, and therefore less costly, to ship and receive goods from Europe, Brandes said. Still, he remains hopeful about the Port’s outlook as infrastructure investments in green technology attract more cargo from abroad.
“There’s been a lot of renewed interest in the importance of Oakland for the East Bay and the ship network for Asia-Pacific trade,” Brandes said. Overall, the maritime conference
“was a pretty positive meeting, even with all the uncertainty going on within the federal government.”
