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Trade war hits businesses that rely on the Port of Los Angeles
Dozens of ships from China have canceled planned West Coast arrivals, including at the Port of Los Angeles, seen here.
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Mario Tama
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Getty Images
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Top line:
President Donald Trump’s trade war is hitting West Coast ports, the entry point for goods from China, with dozens of ships cancelling planned arrivals and layoffs already hitting workers.
What’s happening at the Port of L.A.? Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, said he anticipates a 35% decline in container deliveries this week, compared with the same point last year. “Prices of products made in China now are two and a half times more than they were just last month, and importers just simply cannot justify those costs,” Seroka said.
What’s the impact on climate technologies? The climate world — especially in the transportation and energy storage sectors that rely on lithium batteries — is particularly vulnerable to the pain. While electric vehicles have fewer parts than their combustion engine counterparts, around one-third of their cost is their batteries, a market dominated by Chinese manufacturing.
Looking for information: Stephen Cheung, chief executive of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., says nobody is safe from the global economic upheaval. He said the confusion caused by Trump’s volatile trade policy is being compounded by the White House’s information void. He said that his organization had a direct relationship with the United States trade representative under previous administrations, but the group isn’t in contact with Trump’s top trade advisers. Instead, the nonprofit has turned to larger organizations, including the International Economic Development Council, which has more than 4,500 members globally, to get its message across. “We need to come up with new ways of actually partnering with national organizations that have connections with the White House, to be able to convey that message,” Cheung said.
For more, read the full story in POLITICO’s California Climate newsletter. This story is published in partnership with POLITICO.
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