Is anyone buying stuff made in China early instead of waiting till they run out or need it?
My wife has ordered things like headsets, women’s shoes, clothing, etc in anticipation of higher prices later this year.
I bought a few things sooner than I would have
I have purchased a few things (small items) which will go up in price with the tariffs.
I have a sneaky suspicion that some Chinese tariffs will disappear as soon as SOMEONE realizes that many Christmas gifts come from China and Scrooge (err, sorry, SOMEONE) realizes that both parties celebrate that Holiday.
I think Scrooge will have a few problems talking the elves at the toymaker’s shop into making enough toys for Christmas this year. He’s made the elves real mad at him for imposing tariffs on their toys and other stuff their friends make for people in the US.
The elve’s workshops make the toys for next Christmas based on orders in the Spring time months from Santa’s helpers here in the US.
Santa’s helpers here would have to pay the tariffs when they receive the toys next fall, and many of them can’t afford the increase in prices caused by the tariffs so they are not ordering as many toys to deliver to the kids this coming Christmas.
All this is causing many of the elve’s workshops to cut back and even close some of their workshops where they make the toys.
There’s gonna be some sad kids this Christmas. 
The issue is the lead time, @Lavarock
- stuff has to be on the shelves by what, November 1? (it gets earlier and earlier every year… it’s nuts)
- I asked Copilot AI: “how long does it take product to move from shenzen china to chicago USA using sea freight and trucking?” It’s about 45 days. So it has to leave China mid-September
- I don’t know what the manufacturing lead times are… 90 days? The very last batch of stuff has to start building mid-June?
- But, will the Chinese builders have enough stock of parts on hand or in the JIT pipeline to build, given the uncertainties since April 2 (there’s that word again… uncertainty)
- I don’t know how long the ordering & finance stuff takes… a couple weeks?
- So orders have to be placed by June 1?
- So the Administration has to be DONE, COMPLETED, SIGNED China deal by May 31? That’s one month.
What’s the chances they actually do it? Saying they’re going to do it, that they are talking, isn’t doing it and finishing it.
And hey listen, I want high-value manufacturing jobs to come back to the USA very badly. But there are right ways and wrong ways to go about all of this. I think this has all been the wrong way.
I mean no disrespect to any voters who voted for this President because of the stated goal of wanting high-value manufacturing jobs to come back to the USA. I only have respect for you guys.
What I bought recently:
Qudosen shortwave radio (China) on super low clearance… a return which was checked-out & verified to be working by a highly trusted shortwave radio blogger, rayjayallen, price to me was 50% of new
Schwalbe Marathon Green Guard bike tires (Germany)
A heart rate monitor from Temu (China)
Two new Samsung A16 phones, his & hers (I thought it was China, but it’s really Vietnam and India)
What I’m thinking of not buying:
I’m going to hold off on computer replacement. My 2018 vintage laptop which cannot go to Windows 11 runs fine on Linux. All the data backs up to the cloud in real time… I’ll keep it until it literally dies. Windows 10 support ends October 2025.
Not buying new cars… have a 2012 and a 2013 still running very well.
Not buying a new house… if we get a serious recession and asset prices in general fall, then I want to maybe buy then. Home prices are higher than they were just before the 2008-2009 housing crash. We’re in Housing Bubble 2.0. They can’t stay levitated forever… a long time yes, but not forever.
If you are waiting for a major housing correction, you are going to be waiting a long time. The conditions that led to the crash in 2008-2010 are not present now. There is a shortage of housing units, unlike the huge surplus that existed back then. Also, most homeowners have really low mortgage interest rates with meaningful equity. So there is not a “house of cards” scenario that would lead to a significant decline in home prices. Now, that being said, I fully expect the rate of home price increases will significantly slow down, or even flat-line, for the next several years.
I believe there are more issues than you listed. Much of the China/US traffic is Pacific based to the US West Coast.
There has been an uptick I hear in cargo ships ahead of the tariffs and future bookings from China are diminishing. Any temporary workers (longshoremen) brought in will have to be reduced. Also, current pre-tariff staffing will likely be reduced especially before the holidays as less and less cargo arrives.
Some companys may shift to buying from other countries which also may appear on the west coast, but at probably reduced volume.
If less cargo to the west coast, then transportation companys take a hit on the west coast. I am thinking FedEx, UPS, Union Pacific, DHL and so on.
Many port jobs are under Union contracts. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) may seek to renegotiate hours or job guarantees if tariffs have a sustained impact. There may also be labor disputes if members feel jobs are threatened by international policy.
For us, Hawaii and mid-Pacific are governed by the Jones Act and along with logistics, means that Hawaii suffers more as our cargo from overseas must hit the US West Coast and then be transfered to Hawaii. The mainland issues are compounded for us out here. Our ports cannot handle large container ships, so no direct deliveries from overseas EVEN IF THE LAW ALLOWED IT.
(ChatGPT):
Hawai‘i is uniquely vulnerable to the effects of tariffs and the Jones Act because of its geographic isolation and reliance on maritime shipping. Here’s how the combination of tariffs (especially on goods from China) and the Jones Act can affect Hawai‘i:
- Increased Costs Due to Tariffs
- Hawai‘i imports a significant amount of consumer goods, electronics, and holiday merchandise, much of which originates from or passes through China.
- Tariffs on Chinese imports will increase the wholesale cost of those goods. Because Hawai‘i relies on imports for most of its goods, residents will likely feel price increases more acutely than those on the mainland.
- Jones Act Shipping Constraints
The Jones Act (Merchant Marine Act of 1920) requires that goods transported between U.S. ports be carried on ships that are:
- U.S.-built,
- U.S.-flagged,
- U.S.-owned, and
- U.S.-crewed.
This law means:
- Hawai‘i cannot be resupplied from other U.S. ports using cheaper foreign-flagged ships.
- Any rerouting of goods (e.g., from Chinese to Vietnamese suppliers) that involves inter-U.S. shipping must comply with Jones Act rules, which are more expensive due to the cost of U.S.-flagged shipping.
- In short, Hawai‘i pays more to get goods moved from the mainland—costs that rise further if tariffs make goods more expensive to begin with.
Totally agree on all points. This is going to be ugly for transportation & logistics workers especially.. Ugh, you reminded me of the Jones Act. I hadn’t thought about that one in years. How much does it affect the baseline cost of living in Hawai’i?
There is not a physical shortage of housing units. There is a shortage of affordable housing units. The forces that have made housing unaffordable are in the process of declining, most notably owner / buyer sentiment that “number go up” always. Prices in any market are always discovered between the marginal buyers and sellers.
RE repricing is a 4-D game.
Divorce, Death, Disability, InDebtedness (or Default).
In some cities, investor owners are earning less on their rentals than on risk-free US Treasuries. Maybe they got in approx. 2021 when T-Bills were paying about 0%. They were only paying 2% by mid-2022.
They are facing rising property taxes, rising HOA fees, rising insurance costs, maybe they have balloon payments or adjustable rate mortgages. If the economy has a real recession, their rental rates will go down more than they have already. Remote work is going away for some workers. Many positive cash flows will go negative.
The 4-Ds will come after owners, and they will capitulate… on the margins. I want to buy when sellers are desperate. I bought my house so low ($135k) and haven’t had a mortgage in 13 years, so what I get from my house in a sale during desperate times isn’t top of mind. I’m not the levered party. I’ll take a hit if I can take advantage of a much bigger hit experienced by a stressed seller.
But… it could be a few years. I think the world will be totally different in 2028.
Stock market peak Summer 1929… low trough Summer 1932. Three years. Also for Tech Bubble 1.0. Housing peaked GFC in 2006? By 2010 it was a fire sale. That’s the timescale I carry in my head. Could be faster or slower.
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Housing prices peaked in 2006 because of buyer demand. Buyer demand was up because marginal buyers had access to cheap money, aka; “Liar Loans.” The qualification process for one of these loans ranged from very lenient to no credit check and few questions asked of the borrower.
“Liar Loans” were available because Wall Street had become addicted to the profits made on financial products called “Mortgage-Backed Securities” (MBS’s,) which were made up of real estate mortgages. The MBS’s were combined other securities and an insurance-like product called a “Credit Default Swap” (CDS,) and packaged as a “Collateralized Debt Obligation” (CDO.) The CDO was divided into A, b & C layers (tranches) that were sold as shares of the investment product and payed interest to the share owners based on the risk of each tranche, A tranche having the least risk and paying the smallest ROI and C tranche with the highest risk and paying the highest return to the investor. As things progressed the C tranche was often left partly or entirely unsold.
Then the unsold tranches of earlier CDOs were sometimes combined with fresh MBSs and newly issued credit default swaps to make additional new CDOs and divided into tranches. This made the ability to judge the risk of the resulting offering virtually impossible and buyers had to rely on the assurance of the issuer (like insurance giant AIG) of the credit default swap’s investment quality.
Then in late 2007 things began to unravel… you know the rest of the story. 
Oh, I know the game well. My wife and I bought more than 20 single-family rentals between 2009 and 2014. We still own 12 of them and that is what is funding my early retirement. Our portfolio was purchased at around a 10 cap rate and provides plenty of income and the tax benefits are tremendous. We also managed to flip around 50 homes between 2009 and 2018 before the margins became too thin. Heck, even our primary residence was a FNMA foreclosure that has 4x in value since 2012.
We haven’t had any trouble passing along increasing costs to our tenants, primarily due to our targeted selection of areas based on schools.
Trust me…I would love another crash because there are so many properties I would buy in new areas…but just don’t see it happening. Sure there may be some landlords that get into trouble, but there will be no shortage of others to pick up those homes.
The easy money that fell into the hands of individual home buyers in the pre-GFC era was replaced by easy corporate money post-COVID. Investors have had to chase riskier and riskier investments in order to get a yield. In 2006, you could get 5% on a 10-year Treasury. Maybe 7% on a corporate? 10% on high yield? Post-COVID, the 10-year was paying less than 1%. That sent people to longer durations and riskier things, like real estate. And stocks, of course.
This bubble doesn’t have the same origin as the prior one, but it will end the same way. It will take a while.
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Oh, we also bought eight new tires for our two cars, they were down to 6/32". I don’t like to go below that.
Our recent spending for the things we think will be scarce and/or much more expensive has now surpassed our normal outlay by a factor of two or more.
I think the folks who can afford to do so are buying up essential imported goods, especially items that come from China. That surge of buying has the effect of delaying, and possibly amplifying the purchase slowdown that has yet to show up in the economic telltales.
The sad thing is that the people who can least afford the coming increases in essential consumer goods will be the ones most harmed by it. 
I think it’s impossible to stock up on a family level. If a capacitor goes out in your AC system, how do you stock up on that? How do you stock up on car parts for a part that might fail in coming months? You hope that businesses are doing some of that… but they can’t hold on to that much inventory.
You are right, you can’t predict equipment failures and the myriad of possibilities that might happen in our techno-dependent world.
We are stocking up on consumables. For instance my wife is an avid gardener so we bought a couple of years of vegetable seeds, 200’ of dripline, a box of 1,000 staples, a couple of hoses, a rototiller, etc.
All of the chaos is self-inflicted. None of this needed to happen. It’s a case of “Fire, Ready, Aim”. Then, “we’ll just have to wait and see what happens”. Sound familiar?
I bought a washer dryer in December. IT was built in Mexico, but despite having the greatest trade agreement ever…an agreement that was negotiated by a master negotiator, and which addressed tariffs…are somehow going to be subject to tariffs that will be implemented for everything from stemming the flow of fentanyl to border security. So I wanted to get in before that happened. And I bought it in December because I didn’t want the sale to Lowes to reflect in their 2025 numbers.
Nope. I don’t see any reason to front-load any purchases.
Here is what happened to me in the 80’s/90’s, although the world has changed since then.
I had a washing machine from Sears and needed a part. There was a Sears parts store near me so off I went. I stood in line at the counter and when it was my turn the clerk asked me what I needed. I said “It’s a filter for the washing machine water…” and before I could give his a part number he was off to the back room. When he returned I said “Don’t you need the part number?” and he old me that all their machines used the same part and I believe that many other manufactorers did also. Back then many parts would have already been available and in stock already because there were just a few manufactorers. It still may be valid today however I think not. These days the washers and dryers all have electronic boards and computer chips so I assume that most parts between manufactorers will differ.
A different story. Many decades ago a famous computer/printer/calculator company made various calculators. There was a scientific and a financial calculator which shared the same case design and the only outward difference was the model number and the engraving on the keys. It turns out that unknown to the public, both calculators used the same PC board inside too. It was said that cutting one of the metal tracks on the board switched the handheld from one model to the other. You just needed to know which key to press for the new functions.