How are Americans preparing for the Trumpist supply shock?
From what I'm reading, the troubles should start to pick up now; harbors being quieter, truckers not having work, ... Are any shortages noticeable yet?
ETA:
Source: https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/trump-is-a-virus
Businesses have been filling their inventories. That's ending now. Economic pain in terms of job losses should accelerate now. It will still take up to a few weeks before inventories run empty, and the full impact hits consumers. Even a full reversal of Trumpism couldn't prevent knock-on effects that last into next year.
260
Comments139
Regardless of whether you think something catastrophic will happen tomorrow, next month, next year or never, it's a smart plan to have an emergency stash of shelf-stable food and drinking water to last 72 hours per person in your household for whatever natural or manmade disaster.
My grandma's spirit would haunt me from the dead if it found out I only had 72 hours of food in my home.
Food is easy, water is harder
I'm one of those dirty wasteful Italians who buys bottled water, I've always got ~50 litres of water at home, and I live in the dampest part of Italy anyway
This! I don't even live in a disaster prone area, but I always make sure we'd be fine without power/water for a few days at least.
I have plenty of food sitting around, but realistically, 72 hours without food isn't going to be an issue for an non-infant who doesn't have some kind of serious medical conditions. Probably make most people in the US healthier.
I've fasted for over a week for the hell of it, and people have gone much longer. This guy did it for over a year.
Water is a much-less-forgiving resource.
Sure. Most people probably have a bit of fresh food to rely on in the immediate term if disaster hits, but by the time you get to it, you should have a gauge on how long you will need to make that 72 hours supply actually last. Water is also vital but it does take up more space so as a baseline 72 hours of each is a good starting point.
I can't wait to watch all the Trump-suckers loose their shit when they find out it's Trump's fault. If they can actually comprehend it as true, that is.
They'll just say it's Biden's fault...
That is also my knee-jerk reaction, but with Tariffs it's a pretty direct correlation to Trump now. Hopefully this will be what finally breaks him?
They'll say it, but they won't truly believe it. They'll know the truth, or at least those that still possess some human awareness. There will always be those that are irredeemable, you can't worry about them, they're just lost.
Casual Qur'anic comment, lol. 😅
narrator: they did not
They lost touch with reality a long time ago. They will blame Democrats, or Canada, or Aliens.
A large portion of the rest are in denial. So many people can only learn through the lens of their own experience
We always need more nurses in Sweden, I imagine it's the same in other countries too.
How about generic guys with no special talents in particular but the gift of gab?
For Sweden specifically that could be tricky at the moment with our current government.
Italy sorely needs nurses as well.
Come to Canada, we want and need nurses!
Do you have dual citizenship? Just because you have a passport doesn’t mean you can just flee the country forever.
You don't need citizenship to live in a country, just a work visa
America has officially entered the list of shithole countries. Our infamous American arrogance will not help us. No country is going to want our refugees unless they are wealthy or have an in-demand skill. Even then, they will only want to cherry pick the best of the best.
In addition, we will be 2nd class citizens in any country we land in, and will be treated with the same disdain, discrimination, and abuse as immigrants are treated in America.
Better to stay here, and use your energy to fight to take our nation back. Fascism has generally turned out to be unsustainable in the long term, but it requires constant, sustained resitance to dislodge.
The silver lining is that fascist leaders usually face an ignominious, violent end. Let that be your motivation to resist.
I agree with the idea of staying an upholding your values, but as an Italian, let me tell you people can be pretty ambivalent about people from countries like ours, just as I happen to be seen as either a lazy criminal or a poet cook navigator with nothing in-between, you guys can be seen as dumb and vulgar rednecks or cool rock'n'roll cowboys.
Italian here as well and I support this . Became much more woke about the stereotypes we fall in lately, after 15 years around Europe. Especially when people apply Scorsese movies terminology to us: if someone jokes about me being a mafioso I respond with a small lecture about what mafia really is.
Ya but that’s not an easy thing to get for most countries. A lot of that depends on your career background. They don’t take anyone.
Nurses are well in demand all over Europe.
You're right about this - as a US / Canadian dual citizen, getting a new citizenship is quite an ordeal and not everyone who applies is approved. The nursing experience you mentioned in a separate comment might be enough to qualify for a work permit and then permanent residence. I know that various provincial governments up here are quietly putting in immigration policies that severely cut immigration numbers, but focus heavily on recruiting healthcare workers.
Dual citizenship is probably a bit premature, I doubt you need to concern yourself with that just yet. I would probably have a few places picked out as likely options for a work visa though, after doing some basic research into pay grade vs cost of living and how much you like/would fit in with the local culture.
You probably already have a vague idea of which countries you might enjoy living it.
Going to Germany as a nurse should be possible. You would need to do some language courses and handle some bureaucracy but we have a big nurse shortage.
I have read testimonies from other people who have gone through economic/political instability and hardship. What i got out of it is that prepping will help for a week to a month maybe. But after that preppers just feel dumb after that as all that work didn't mean much long term.
The only thing that universally matters is having community ties. Unfortunately.... USA aren't very community friendly or even have the opportunity to create strong local bonds. As all community events are during work hours so only retired people part take in those.
Boomers ventured out on route 66 and never returned. One generation destroyed community for cheap large screen TVs.
Prepare? I'm poor lol
Learn to cook beans and rice from scratch. Stock up on them in bulk. Emergency food packs can be bought from $45 and up depending on how many you have to feed and for how long you're planning to need it.
I already know how to cook poverty foods from living off £8k a year back around 2016.
I feel that from personal experiencto. I learned while earning 0 at the time. Fortunately I was living in Seattle which has/had some great food banks and food resources for the destitute.
I feel awful for the genuinely good people living there. But to all of the people that either voted for this or sat back and did nothing to prevent this: I genuinely, sincerely, from the bottom of my heart hope that you fucking suffer like never before.
Don’t worry the entire world will suffer not just the people you don’t like in the US.
This has certainly been true in the past, but I'm seeing the next few of these will affect the rest of the world less than it did in the past. Other nations are decoupling from USD as a reserve currency so they are a bit more insulated from US economic swings. Further, China will have extra manufacturing capacity since the USA is effectively blocked for many of its goods. This means that China will (likely already is) finding other markets in the world for these goods and others producible from the excess manufacturing capacity. Increased supplied will mean reduced prices everywhere else in the world besides the USA.
Worldwide petroleum prices will likely fall because of reduced demand from the USA. Food prices may be one place prices rise with the reduced production from the ongoing war of Russian aggression in Ukraine, and the voluntary reduction of food imports from the USA in response to USA tariffs on imports. So this will place a strain on non-USA based food producing countries.
I say all of this as an American appalled at what trump is doing to the USA and the world.
"May you have the day you voted for."
Well, the assholes in charge over here dismantled FEMA, a national disaster relief organization. And there are some pretty Republican regions that regularly need its assistance from hurricanes and other weather disasters.
I'm waiting to see whether the American resistance (if it can be called that) succeeds, and what they do if they succeed, before I take that position, but fair enough.
I'm far less worried about the imminent supply shock to the economy and far more worried about the long term damage to things like the FDA. We've decided we're going to try to go from ~10% vegetarian to closer to 80% or 100% because I simply don't trust that thing like meat and milk can stay safe to consume. I do have a solid amount of food in my house, and if shelves start emptying I think I'll be okay for a bit, but that'll pass. I can't really leave this country, so I need to be planning for longer term problems too.
I have this fear that we won't even be able to trust fruits and vegetables. The most common food contaminations in the news always seem to be unwashed lettuce and such, which makes sense because of fertilizers.
I’ve been preparing for some kind of problem with produce for a few years, I just had a gut feeling so I built a vegetable garden 3 years ago. Also have been planting fruit trees everywhere.
While the nation was functioning, meat and dairy would have been regulated by the USDA, not the FDA.
It's quite crazy to hear that the US is about to force UK and EU to buy more chlorinated chicken, and then hear that US will stop salmonela testing while negotiating this.
Farmers' markets (or direct from a local farm/butcher) are probably your best bet for what meat you do buy, if you don't go full veg
Ive been stockpiling canned proteins like tuna, chicken, clams, oysters, etc. even Spam. They may not be trustworthy in the future, but they are right now, so stack them up.
I can make a cheap but killer soup with a can of chicken, some ramen, and herbs, and i can even grow the herbs myself.
Cargo container bookings are down 60%. 60%! Thats an incredible drop, and it really hasn't even started yet.
I'm ready for a "Hot Tariff Summer."
I've been on a no-purchase kick for a while now, even before HitlerPig was elected. We have become such a culture of consumerism that it had started to disgust me. I've embraced the "re-use, repair, re-sell, recycle" philosophy. If i need something, i try to buy it used.
I'm a guitarist, so I buy used guitars when i get a good deal, clean them up, fix them, and re-sell them at a small profit. It puts a beautiful instrument back into service, allows a poor or new musician an opportunity to have an inexpensive but quality instrument, and its music makes the world a slightly more beautiful place.
I even went on a much-needed diet (down 80 pounds so far, and still going), and decreasing my consumption, and spending less money with evil corporations, is a primary motivation.
So let the shelves be empty of cheap Chinese-made consumer goods, i don't need them, despite how much advertising and marketing tells me i do.
The silver lining is that if tariffs become a longterm thing, people will be forced to come around to my way of thinking, and when the tariffs finally end, corporations may be surprised to find that nobody needs their shiny crap any more.
As someone else that does "clean up" and "fix them" for other non-instrument items, are you concerned about your supply/cost of replacement parts and supplies? Most of mine come from China.
Somewhat, mostly strings. Most of the rest is just adjustments, using tools I already have. I still have a fair stock of strings, but I was thinking of buying a bunch more to hold me over for a while.
Cleaning is also a big part, but that's easy.
I suppose if it gets bad, and I need to buy tuners and bridges, etc., I can buy a few junk guitars, and cannibalize them for parts.
This is a future I see on my side too. The price will likely go up for our services to support this for a supply of parts though. If we get to that point, you won't be the only one buying up junk guitars as others will be buying them for the same reason. So the price of junk guitars is going to go up too.
I expect used items of all types are going to increase - clothes, appliances, toys, etc. Goodwill and other thrift shops are about to have the biggest boom period of their history.
Not shortages yet, but steep price increases.
I have dropped some items from my normal grocery list because of ramping prices. Eggs and avocados were first, but it's expanding to other things now.
I have some hobby projects I want to do that would require buying new hardware; those prices are going up so that is on hold until further notice.
I work from home 95% of the time and do much of my evening/weekend socializing and hobbies within walking distance of my home, so I could drop my driving and fuel consumption very low.
I bought a $30 renter-friendly bidet kit so I am way less exposed to another toilet paper shortage.
I was going to buy a new car, probably a RAV4 internal hybrid, within the next 1-2 years but that is completely up in the air now. My current car is functional, just old, and I would continue driving it rather than swap to an inferior and dangerous American car like Tesla.
Buy less, budget conscientiously, wait to see what happens. Exactly what Trump doesn't want but which anyone with half a brain cell knew would happen.
How much are avocados where you are? They're still $1 each here which is too bad.
They doubled over the last ~week at my grocery store. Typically 88 cents to $1, today $1.99.
Dang.
We'll see if they stay up or if it was a minor swing due to, I don't know, short term short supply. I was reading they are an interesting bellweather because of their very short shelf-life and west-to-east shipping path.
They're one of my favorite lunches while hiking. Good fats. Easy. No refrigeration needed.
I am really curious about how much media attention the consequences of the Orange Man's moves will get. Fascism is at work and the first thing fascists do is get control of the media.
Know your communities, people. That's the prep you need.
"Where two eat, three can eat also."
I've converted all my investments into girl scout cookies because they (1) are high value And can be traded for goods and services; and (2) can be eaten when no food is available. 😉
I hate that this is how you found out, but...
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-Fudge-Mint-Cookies-10-Oz/11997740
Fools gold!
My company layed off the newest hire, and bought $50k of materials we need for R&D for the next year and a half. Im in the process of buying a duplex instead of a single family as a hedge, so my cost of living will be low enough to survive on my wife's part time salary if we can keep a renter. I will be planting food producing trees and bushes, and building garden boxes after close, and learning canning.
Look for bareroot trees if you want a better deal.
This hits home. I was just here pondering if I'd take meaningful action given forewarning but doubt myself.
Honestly I have a lot of ethical distress over my decision. I'm using savings to power through a couple months hardship here then moving to Sweden to see if my second attempt at college can stick this time. I'm going to buy some essentials like toilet paper, flour, canned tomato goods, while they're still readily available. Not too much though since I just need enough to make it work while I'm here and I want to limit my panic buying impact
I'm an American citizen self deporting.
Remember when COVID supply-chain difficulties made prices shoot up? And several years after that situation peaked prices STILL haven't gone back to normal? This gonna be like that except COMPLETELY unnecessary, brought to you entirely by MAGA. Remember it when the midterm elections come up in 2 years. That won't be difficult cuz it will still be going on and will be even worse.
Well some products will go down at first, the ones they can't sell to other countries any more the supply will skyrocket until they cut production to reduce their losses. So perishable things like certain food, will possibly decrease for a season, then will go up higher/possibly "sky rocker" as when you produce less your profits are lower, so they will have to mark them up / some people will just stop farming. The possibility of the bees dying out seems more worrisome than the tarrifs long term though for many foods.
People don’t really know what to do, except save money, cut back on disposable spending, and watch carefully. Maybe buy some big things early like a laptop or EV now rather than wait for the shock. The big problems are a few weeks to months away.
We're not. All of the panic I've seen is on Lemmy. I haven't seen it anywhere else, even reddit.
Huh. Haven't actually seen panic on Lemmy. I only see it on social media accounts of economists and logistics people.
Damn experts, what do they know?
Not surprisingly, Vance said words exactly to that effect during the vice-presidential debate. No one can say that they did not see this coming.
The sentiment on r/wallstreetbets is that "we're cooked", but the market is still "running on hopium" that Trump will fold.
You're posting from a tankie instance. I think there might be more to the story. Or not, reddit is indeed fickle, I once caught a perma ban for saying that the pedophile mohammed raped a 9 year old and was a pedophile.
So who knows?
This you?
Fuck off
Yes. That's me.
No. I won't be fucking off. I might switch to mbin at some point, but I'll still be here
.world is not the tankie instance but they leak out sometimes. Youre thinking of .dbzer and .ml
The other dude, the one I replied to, is posting from Lemmy.ml
Been practicing cooking lentils, Bean's and rice since middle of last year.
I understand what lentils and rice are good for, but what on earth did Ben do to deserve being cooked?
Lol, fixed. Sorry Ben!
Huh. What of Bean's are you cooking?
Dried black beans in an instant pot. Very cheap, very filling, and versatile. I like them in a chili, or Yucatan style black bean soup
I haven't actually been living for the past 30 years.
Hotblack Desiato, is that you?
Smart play
Curling up into the fetal position and crying in between protests.
I got a hefty stockpile of food. Probably gonna grab some extras of random consumables in the next couple days. Maybe an extra kilo of 3D printer filament mostly just for fun but also in case I need some random plastic whosywhatsit that can't be found any more.
I have installed a bidet in case toilet paper gets panic bought again
Most importantly stock up on toilet papers to resell for massive filthy profits, take advantage of filthy buts!! With that money you can send your children through college and save lives and end world hunger! even fund research to cure cancer!!.
A lot of toilet paper is actually manufactured in the US which is why us shutting things down during Covid impacted supply so much, the tariffs won’t impact TP since it’s domestic production.
Toilet paper shortage in stores was a global phenomenon. It’s seems like during times of crisis, people buy toilet paper. The grocery stores just weren’t prepared for everybody to buy toilet paper at the same time. They couldn’t keep up with the restocking.
There was no real shortage in toilet paper in terms of production.
Well yes. How else would you clean the fan when shit hits it?
It occurred just like gasoline shortages occur. If the media doesn't make headlines that suggest buying as much as you can immediately, even if there is a supply chain problem things can adjust to meet normal demands. But when everyone takes all the stock at the same time, even a running production can't keep up with that demand in a just-in-time system. I experienced a local fuel shortage before because of news of a damaged oil pipeline far away, and gas became unavailable for a few days, then started filling back up, all long before the pipeline issue would have affected us.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."
It was a global impact, the US is a significant exporter of toilet paper. 99% of our domestic use is locally manufactured AND we export a considerable volume to the rest of the world.
Believe it or not TP is big business here in the US and one of a few industries where we still have a lot of traditional manufacturing jobs. Georgia-Pacific and Kimberly Clark for example.
Hail corporate.
when price of other tariffed products, equipment, staff salary goes up. It means your expenses are more even if your business is not affected by tariffs. ie prices will go up even for non-tariffs items.
Imagine if trump only tariffed imported chicken, but my business is selling pen and pencils which are not tariffed, I would still have to raise prices of pen and pencil because the price of my food just went up, I would need to make more money to eat chicken meat and have the same purchasing power . No one is going to reduce their income/profit/salary/purchasing power in fact people will take advantage and increase.
I'm soupmaxxing
OP’s data shows the U.S. is stocking up tremendously in April, and then maintaining year-on-year patterns after that with a slight downturn that doesn’t even compensate for April’s glut.
I haven’t seen this data before but it shows the opposite of the shortage I was expecting.
May still be a few weeks more before it's critical then.
You seem to be misreading that.
Please correct me, then. The surprising moment came when I noticed the vertical axis is for year-on-year change and not raw tonnage.
Yes. It goes from much higher than last year to much lower.
My read was that it was much higher to prepare inventory for the tariff shock
I think the issue is you're waiting for the negatives to be equal to the surplus of one month, when the trend (from three points of data so do with that what you will) is negative. So, ostensibly, after enough months of negatives, there will be much, much more negative than positives.
Yup that’s exactly what I was doing, and I was surprised that the negatives won’t catch up until at least 3 months which brings us to July at the earliest.
Edit: Thanks General I didn’t notice it’s in weeks. So we’re looking at early June which is closer to what we were all thinking.
Yes, and then, or rather now, incoming shipping collapses.
There will be no drama, as it happened with eggs some weeks ago. I don't mean it will not be a problem for someone, but media will inflate how people will be affected or not be affected
Dude any good fuckup to the system like Suez Canal or... say, Panama
We saw all this happen just after covid. We saw what market collapse can do in '08. Drama will come.
The question is, is this just confident distancing from the overhype and fear-mongering, or is this a head-in-the-sand approach to a severe calamity? Can we know before it actually hits?
Would you rather over-plan for it, or under-plan?
Distancing but no head-in-the-sand: again, there will be problems and if I could change some investment or stock something to help me in the near future, I'd do, but I think it will have marginal impact on me. The most impacted will be people not having the chance to plan anything, and their problems will reflect to anyone else
How you figure? Trump will just fold?
I was looking at a reolink camera last night.
About $80 on Amazon.
On aliexpress (where the reolink website itself directs you for check out), the same camera is over $200.
Ali vendors were jacking up prices long before the exception removal date and before even some of the tariffs went into effect.
I think shortages will be short-lived as companies and retailers just have to suck it up and pay more. People won't be able to buy as much stuff, so layoffs and a recession or depression are likely, but there's not much I can think of doing to prepare for that.
Food and housing are the only classes many have left.
Already have everything I should need for the next few years besides consumables. Considering buying a few buckets of emergency food from Costco. Other than that, bending over and lubing up because I can’t keep a cactus alive, much less crops.
Most of what I grow is for flavour rather than sustenance, pretty limited space. Doubt I will survive for long off garlic, bay leaves and rosemary with a sprinkling of mint.
Not yet here. Maybe a few more weeks?
Canadian here... I'm preparing by buying puts on SPY
Hehe same
IDK how long it takes from the ports to you, but that should end in a few days. Keep us updated!
How's going now? Any noticeable change yet?
Are they gonna blow up some vessels? What doe she negative number mean? XD
The negative number means that far fewer ships are arriving in LA than at the same time last year.
the shortages and disruptions have been happening and Trump is not the end all be all of all things just another puppet that was
voted inselected by the elitesbeen an issue worse since covid and not just because of tariffs or what presidential puppet sits in the white house
no preparing for something when we have nothing to start preparing with in the first place
at least in the United States you have lots of people at the bottom, some in the upper middle, and very few elites that control it all
this guy has a wild comment history lol
What on earth did i just read? None of that was even coherent.
On the bright side, it probably wasn't AI-generated.
That's a low bar
I think we do have a few things worth preparing for.
For most people, the federal government doesn't really exist in their lives. They only see it at tax time. The rest of their lives are mandated by local and state government.
The regime has defanged the legislative and judicial branches now. It's all down to states. Unless a better framework is proposed fast.
I think Bookchin's theories stood pretty good test in Rojava.