美国国家公共电台 NPR Tariffs Are Having A Chilling Effect On More U.S. Businesses

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We're going to get another view of how the growing trade fight is affecting American businesses by learning about what's happening inside U.S. meat lockers¹. Here's NPR's Chris Arnold.

CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE²: If you want to see what a trade fight can do to exports, what's happening with pork is pretty dramatic. Mary Lovely is an economist³ at Syracuse University, and she says after two rounds of retaliatory⁴ tariffs⁵ by China, ham and various other pork products now face massive tariffs between 62 and 70 percent.

MARY LOVELY: In recent weeks, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has reported zero weekly export sales of pork to China. So our exports to the country have pretty much collapsed⁶.

ARNOLD: That doesn't just affect hog⁷ farmers. Chuck McCarthy runs a cold storage meat warehousing business in the Port of Wilmington at North Carolina.

CHUCK MCCARTHY: Well, I tell you. We're a relatively⁸ new company. We've been very busy in the first year, year and a half and - but have noticed a change since the tariffs with China and all that started.

ARNOLD: McCarthy says his biggest customer was sending him sizable loads of pork products every day to ship to China. It was a lot of work, more than a hundred thousand dollars a month.

MCCARTHY: We're blast-freezing that product for them. We're storing it for them. We're preparing it for export. We're loading the containers out.

ARNOLD: But...

MCCARTHY: About four weeks ago, it just stopped. And I called to inquire about why it had stopped, and they said that their company was not packing anything for China as a result of the political situations that were going on.

ARNOLD: So the trade fight between the Trump⁹ administration and China means a big hit for McCarthy's business. But the overall U.S. economy is strong. And so far, the tariffs are affecting a very small fraction of it. And that's even true for the refrigerated warehouse¹⁰ and shipping¹¹ industry that McCarthy's a part of. Corey Rosenbusch is the president of the industry group the Global Cold Chain Alliance.

COREY ROSENBUSCH: Our members are not reporting any impact from the tariffs at this point.

ARNOLD: Rosenbusch says some members like McCarthy might be getting hurt but not enough to get on his radar¹². He says most refrigerated warehouses¹³ are packed to the rafters with all kinds of products that are not for export or affected¹⁴ by tariffs - frozen pizzas, chicken for local stores.

ROSENBUSCH: I was at a facility the other day, for example, that stores coffee creamer. And they had 75 different types of coffee creamer they were storing.

ARNOLD: But while the tariffs aren't affecting most of the economy yet, many industries are worried that the damage could quickly get a lot worse, especially if President Trump follows through with more tariffs that he's considering, for example, on cars and auto¹⁵ parts. That industry is opposed to the tariffs, and some companies say they're already holding off on hiring and are nervous about the impact on jobs going forward.

For his part, the warehouse operator Chuck McCarthy says he supports the president trying to get better trade deals, but he doesn't want all this to drag on for much longer either.

MCCARTHY: If you start having problems with tariffs and people not wanting to buy our products and we not buying theirs, you know, after a little while, you've got to pull it back in a little bit and say, well, let's negotiate on that a little more, you know (laughter)?

ARNOLD: That's exactly the kind of conversation the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, will be likely trying to have with President Trump at the White House tomorrow. Chris Arnold, NPR News.