| In the public debate over President-elect Donald Trump’s tariff plans, most of the concern centers on how higher duties will hurt US importers and consumers. But American industries that manufacture goods for overseas markets also have a lot to lose in trade wars. “Unfortunately, we haven’t heard a lot about exports in this campaign from either side,” said Mary Lovely, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “That’s unfortunate, because our exporters are our biggest, most productive, most innovative companies.” The US is the second-largest exporter of manufactured goods in the world, and according to government data, exports supported 6.7% of total U.S. employment in 2022. Every $1 billion dollars of exports is estimated to have supported 4,100 jobs. “We’re going to see higher prices on the things that our producers use to produce in the United States,” Lovely said at the Port of Los Angeles on Wednesday. “They’ll be hurt with this price increase, and they will find in the global marketplace that their competitors are not hamstrung in the same way.” The first phase of Trump’s trade war in 2018 was a warmup, perhaps even a playbook. “We saw a run-up of cargo before tariff milestone or implementation dates, and then a huge drop off thereafter,” Port of LA Executive Director Gene Seroka said. The Southern California seaport is certainly seeing another surge. LA and the Port of Long Beach next door have this year seen their busiest-ever peak season, which began earlier — and has lasted longer — than is typical. (Read more on the record cargo flows here.) Before Trump’s trade war began, 57% of the port’s business was with China, Seroka said. “That number is currently down to 43% yet we’re still growing,” thanks to manufacturing that’s moved elsewhere. This time, uncertainty abounds: How far will Trump go imposing higher tariffs and how quickly will they be rolled out, on which countries and in what order? It all has many US importers rushing in goods as quickly as they can. For longer-term planning, it’s more of a wait-and-see mindset. Trump’s new pledge to lay a 10% or 20% tax on all imported goods has put supply chain managers in a bind. “It’s a very difficult time to place the kind of $20 million, $50 million bets that manufacturers have to place to build new plants,” Lovely said. Read More: Trump Tariff Plans Expected to Deliver High Drama, Bumpy Rollout That risk is even higher because Trump could decide to go after goods made with Chinese components, regardless of where they’re manufactured. That would put factory investments at risk as well as driving up shipping costs. “If the US says no Chinese content, no matter what the good, what the product, whether there’s a national security implication or not, you’re going to see that supply chains will be created at higher expense just to serve the United States,” Lovely said. Boeing’s Concerns At least one major US company is already trying soften the blow. The CEO of Boeing, one of the country’s biggest exporters, said he recently discussed the impact of potential tariffs with Trump, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. Kelly Ortberg warned employees that a trade war with China could hit Boeing especially hard because the company sells jets to Chinese airlines and the US doesn't import any aircraft from the country. While Trump will have the authority to enact tariffs on China through executive order or administrative action, the universal penalty on everyone else may be harder to pull off, even with Republicans in charge on Capitol Hill. Read More: How Trump Could Put His Campaign Promises on Tariffs Into Action “I think we’ll see action from Congress where individual districts are saying, ‘Hey, you know, trade with Germany is really important to us,’ or ‘Hey, you know, we have a South Korean auto plant in our district,’” Lovely said. There are potentially other curbs to the president’s tariff plans. For example, Trump has directly threatened US companies. On the campaign trail, he slammed Deere & Co., the nearly 200-year-old farm equipment maker, over plans to lay off workers in the Midwest and move some production to Mexico. “I’m just notifying John Deere right now, if you do that, we’re putting a 200% tariff on everything that you want to sell into the United States,” Trump said in September. Going after individual companies “is really not what we do in terms of trade policy,” Lovely said. “Retaliatory tariff for movements of investment outside the United States has just not been done. I don’t see how the president could do it unless there was some legislation in Congress.” —Laura Curtis in Los Angeles Click here for more of Bloomberg.com’s most-read stories about trade, supply chains and shipping | 
