Amidst an operational metal manufacturing plant in Vancouver, local business leaders met for a roundtable discussion with U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., to express their concerns about the uncertainty from tariffs.
Murray met with representatives from the United Grain Corporation, the Port of Kalama, the local longshoremen’s union, Workforce Southwest Washington and Thompson Metal Fabrication on Thursday, April 17. They all expressed their concerns about the Trump administration’s tariffs — taxes paid by American companies buying foreign goods are often put on to the American consumer to cover the increase in costs.
On April 2, President Trump announced new tariffs on nearly every country, including a 10 percent baseline tariff on all imported goods and country-specific reciprocal tariffs. Just hours after the reciprocal tariff rates took effect earlier this month, Trump put a 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs. However, Trump is still taxing goods from every country across the board at a minimum of 10 percent and has entered a trade war with China, with tariffs of 145 percent on Chinese goods.
Washington state has one of the most trade-dependent economies of any state in the country, with 40 percent of jobs tied to international commerce, Murray’s office stated in a release.
Murray also acknowledged the impacts of tariffs on businesses such as Boeing, one of Washington’s biggest companies, as the tariff war with China has led the Chinese government to tell its airlines to cease orders. Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, April 15 that the halt on jet deliveries is another blow to Boeing as China accounted for 25-30 percent of the plane manufacturer’s business.
“It’s a huge impact,” Murray said. “If all of a sudden China is not buying Boeing airplanes, it means that we start seeing layoffs of our manufacturing industry here in the Pacific Northwest with Boeing and really across the nation. So Boeing faces a question of, ‘can we continue to build airplanes here?’ I hear the president talk about we’re going to reestablish manufacturing. Well, you’re going to unestablish manufacturing if we start losing manufacturing plants like Boeing because of the counter-tariffs.”
John Rudi, president and owner of Thompson Metal Fab, said he is concerned with the inconsistency in trade policies by the Trump administration, adding that his company cannot provide accurate bids for projects with how frequently prices are changing on materials.
“What I heard is the uncertainty of the way these tariffs are being implemented is going to impact people in ways that it’s really hard to see right now,” Murray told reporters after the roundtable. “Whether it’s our farmers who can’t get the equipment they need and the fertilizer they need, and that means their prices increase. Whether it’s the farmers who are trying to sell soybeans who don’t have a market for it anymore, so everybody along the chain, whether it’s the truck drivers or the port workers or whoever is going to feel the impact of that next fall.”
Murray added that the tariffs will hit every single family in America with a cost to it.
“It’s going to hit our businesses and it’s certainly going to hit our ports here, and it’s not just short term,” she said. “If this continues long term, we will lose our market share. We will see a lot of our products go to British Columbia rather than fueling jobs here at this port.”
Additionally, more than 12,000 small and medium-sized companies in Washington state export goods and will struggle to absorb the impact of retaliatory tariffs, Murray’s office stated.
Canada is Washington’s largest overall trading partner, according to Murray’s office, accounting for nearly $20 billion in imports and $10 billion in exports. China is the world’s second-largest economy and Washington state exported over $12 billion in goods to China last year — making China Washington state’s top export partner — and imported $11.2 billion in goods, the second-most in imports from any country aside from Canada. Trump’s tariffs during his first term were extremely costly for Washington state, Murray’s office stated, “for example, India imposed a 20 percent retaliatory tariff on U.S. apples, causing Washington apple shipments to India to fall by 99 percent and growers to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in exports.”
Miriam Halliday, CEO of Workforce Southwest, the Local Workforce Development Board designated as the policy, planning, and oversight body for the public workforce system in Clark, Cowlitz, and Wahkiakum counties, said the international tariff strategies are making for a challenging employment scene in the region.
“I’ve heard from my private sector board members that it’s not based on demand but more so based on uncertainty,” Halliday said in the roundtable. “The lack of clarity as it relates to knowing sort of financial forecasts in the next year leads to stalling in workforce expansion and it just continues down the line.”
Murray told reporters that Congress needs to reassert its power to make sure tariffs aren’t impacting states. With bipartisan legislation in the works to limit the president’s authority on tariffs pending in Congress, Murray said it needs to gain further Republican support.
“We are trying to work with our Republican colleagues to get them to support it,” she said. “I’m out here today to hear about the impact so I can bring these arguments back.”
