These conversations aired in the May 6, 2025 episode of Crosscurrents.
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The Port of Oakland is usually very busy. During a typical year, the port will process over two and a half million cargo containers.
But, if you are crossing the Bay Bridge in the next few weeks, you might notice less and less shipping traffic coming in and out… and the ships you do see are expected to get smaller and smaller.
That’s because demand for goods moving through the port is falling as uncertainty rises around the impact of Trump tariffs. And the biggest target of these tariffs? Chinese goods. Right now America has a blanket 145 percent tariff on imported products from China.
That’s not just slowing down shipping traffic, it’s also threatening the existence of Bay Area Chinatowns. To get an idea about how the federal trade policies are landing locally we spoke to one small business in San Francisco’s Chinatown.
There are roughly 1000 small businesses that call San Francisco’s Chinatown home. To help us understand how the tariffs are threatening the whole neighborhood, I spoke with the President of the city's Chinese Chamber of Commerce, Donald Luu.
