Exports up, imports down

Powerlineblog ^ | June 5, 2025 | Bill Glahn

[lasereye]

Are the tariffs working? The headline from the BBC,

Tariffs prompt record plunge in US imports.

The details,

Goods brought into the US plunged by 20% in April, recording their largest ever monthly drop in the face of a wave of tariffs unleashed by US President Donald Trump.

You literally have to go down to the final two sentences to learn the bottom line of the report,

Exports so far this year are up about 5% compared with 2024.
The overall goods and services deficit in April was $61.6bn, down from $138.3bn in March.

Wut? Exports are up? How can that be? By the way, the monthly drop in the trade deficit was the biggest ever recorded.

You’ve heard a lot this year about the Port of Long Beach, California. The Port’s stats for April show that inbound traffic was higher than February or March and appears to be the highest level ever recorded for an April.

The Port maintains statistics going back for decades. For at least the past 25 years, the number of empty outbound containers has exceeded the number of outbound containers loaded with cargo.

To repeat, the No. 1 export out of one of America’s biggest container ports continues to be empty air.

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TOPICS: Business/Economy; China; News/Current Events; United Kingdom
KEYWORDS: billglahn; ccp; china; exports; imports; maga; tariffs; unitedkingdom; weruntheplanet

[lasereye]

I posted a negative article about the impact of the tariffs. Here's a positive one. Fair and balanced. We report you decide.

[Owen]

Don’t really need an article. The numbers are public.

And of course what’s going on here is imports is what drove GDP negative in q1 because there was a piling on to purchase and store them in warehouses before tariffs were applied to them.

Now, those goods that are being taken out of the warehouse incrementally means that that particular good doesn’t have to come in as an import. Until the warehouse is empty, which is inevitable..

[Carry_Okie]

Where's Captain Obvious when you need him?

Good time to be a forklift operator.

[Dan Zachary]

purchase and store them in warehouses

So in the matter of a couple months they were able to order tons of Chinese crap, get the raw matterials/personnel/machinery/etc., produce it, ship it half way around the world, and find a place to store it just to beat the tarriffs?

What explains the increase in exports then?

[SaveFerris]

Focus on the exporting, not the importing

[Mr. Blond]

Gum?

[SaveFerris]

And if you notice in “Twister” (1996) gum is offered to Jami Gertz at the diner in Oklahoma during the repair of the flat tire.

$100 of Low-Mein gum!!!

[SaveFerris]

$100 of Lo-Mein gum!!!

[sauropod]

Bkmk

[central_va]

What a stupid negative asshole comment.

[DoodleBob]

[trebb]

Seems to prove that speaking plainly and carrying a big tariff stick works....

[Vaduz]

Tariffs = Balanced Trade

[Owen]

So in the matter of a couple months they were able to order tons of Chinese crap, get the raw matterials/personnel/machinery/etc., produce it, ship it half way around the world, and find a place to store it just to beat the tarriffs?

What explains the increase in exports then?

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Don’t think there is any doubt about the imports in March driving GDP negative.

GDP = C(onsumption) + G(ovt Spending) + I(nvestment)
+ (Exports - Imports)

GDP was -0.3% Q1 and Imports surged 41% with a modest Export increase of 1.8%.

The article does mention a 5% increase in Exports compared to 2024, but I guess that refers to Q1 since Q2 data is not in yet. Q1 increase as just noted was +1.8% (likely measured over Q4) and a reasonable chunk of that would be inflation.

So if the 5% in the article is Q1’s level vs Q1 (2024)’s level then that’s an entire year of 2024 inflation (call it 2.8%) which was accumulating during Q2, Q3, Q4 of 2024.

Population grows around the world. They buy more stuff. Some from us, some from inflation. I would not celebrate Q1 exports as somehow the result of Biden policies and what happened in the later quarters of 2024. Rather, it’s just normal inflation + global population gain.

[fuzzylogic]

We need to get this tariff business behind us. It is beginning to impact everything because nobody knows what economic decisions they can make without the circumstances changing between morning and afternoon. Therefore, the result is ‘pause everything’. I see this across some large industries. Sometimes knowing a bad outcome is better than not knowing what the outcome will be over a long period of time.