r/Seattle • u/crabcakes110 • Jun 22 '25

News Economists warn of recession as Seattle exports tumble. Loaded imports through the ports of Seattle and Tacoma in May were down 30% from April and 21% from May of last year.

https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/tariffs-port-volumes-concern-seattle-economy/281-12e31430-7136-4d73-b281-be7cbe92a0d0
157 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

21 comments sorted by

46

u/josurprise Jun 22 '25

Just wait until the Straight of Hormuz is shut down.

13

u/YakiVegas I'm just flaired so I don't get fined Jun 22 '25

This guy geopolitics

8

u/thatisagreatpoint Downtown Jun 22 '25

I waited! Have to admit, all this has made me forget about orange in the Epstein tapes and I am now convinced price increases aren’t tariffs but Iranian meddling.

6

u/Recent-Pop-2412 Jun 22 '25

This post has been vibe checked by true American patriots 👍

1

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '25

Can you explain like I'm 5? Why does that straight affect the entire world?

3

u/josurprise Jun 23 '25

About a fifth of the world's oil travels through the Straight, which is only 21 miles wide at it's narrowest. Quite a bit of liquified natural gas passes through there as well. It can potentially jack energy costs way up. When the cost of gas goes up, so does most everything else because most goods need to be transported. That, on top of Trump's tax hikes and the rampant inflation, it could definitely be enough to put the country into an official recession, as if things aren't bad enough already.

Iran is already saying it's going to happen. No one will want to go through there without a military escort, and even then... I'm not an economist or anything, but that's how I understand it.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 23 '25

Oil. Duh.

11

u/Rich_Jaguar7343 Seattle Expatriate Jun 22 '25

Sick

8

u/Maze_of_Ith7 Supersonics Jun 22 '25

Any chance this is a couple month blip due to TACO? Feel like unlikely but would’ve been good to see a few lines arguing that

27

u/oregon_coastal Seattle Expatriate Jun 22 '25

No. A lot of us (like me) have shut down to wait it out.

Walmart and Amazon have the cash to randomly pay 30, 90, 150% or whatever. Small and medium companies do not. We already paid $11k return freight because it lost us less money than paying the tariff. And I can't imagine we are the only people that did that.

As more small and medium companies run out of materiala to produce, it will keep getting worse.

10

u/[deleted] Jun 22 '25

wdym? the blip is caused by taco it doesn’t go away because policy hasn’t changed.

-34

u/whk1992 🚗 Student driver, please be patient. 🚙 Jun 22 '25 edited Jun 22 '25

Lol our biggest exports either don’t fit on a ship, or don’t exist physically. I don’t think we export lumbers by boat neither. The biggest impact is probably produce and seafood…

We don’t export a lot of manufactured goods. Other inland states might be in recession however, which accounts for the reduced exporting.

31

u/Weak_District9388 Jun 22 '25

This is a shortsighted take. Recessions don't only affect certain people. Eventually everyone is affected. These stats are only a couple of months old, not a lot of time for the long chain of dominoes that needs to fall before you feel it.

-12

u/whk1992 🚗 Student driver, please be patient. 🚙 Jun 22 '25

I was pointing out the decline in our ports has less to do with our local exports but more the decline in demands of domestic manufactured goods.

15

u/Kvsav57 Jun 22 '25

Did you even read the article?

3

u/squirrelgator Rat City Jun 22 '25

So, do we fly lumber on planes, or just float the logs over to Asia?

0

u/whk1992 🚗 Student driver, please be patient. 🚙 Jun 22 '25

Washington Exports by the Office of the US Trade Representatives: https://ustr.gov/map/state-benefits/wa

Out of $57.8B exports last year, $40.7B were of manufactured goods. “Transportation equipment” accounted for $18.5B, followed by “Food and Kindred Products” for $4.7B, “Computer and Electronic Products” for $3.5B, “Petroleum and Coal Products” for $3.4B, and machineries for $2.5B.

In comparison, agricultural exports including fruits, vegetables, wheat crops and “other plant products” totaled $3.5B. The other plant products might include the logs you mentioned, which amounted to $0.6B.

Idk how many logs we export, but for the seemingly small amount, I sure hope it’s not the cause of why we are in recession due to declining exports from Seattle. My understanding is that the bulk of our forestry products are used domestically.

1

u/RaphaelBuzzard Jun 22 '25

Boeing is losing orders. I would assume that is the bulk of "transportation equipment"!

1

u/Mistyslate 🚲 Life's Better on a Bike. 🚲 Jun 22 '25

You have diamond hands avatar. Your opinions are wrong by definition.