Sunday, May 11, 2025 | 2 a.m.
Editor’s note: Este artículo está traducido al inglés.
Steve Finn, owner of Premium Trucking in Las Vegas, maintains that President Donald Trump’s approach to trade policy addresses a necessary concern.
The hemorrhaging of U.S. manufacturing jobs over the past three decades required intervention, and Finn acknowledges merit in Trump’s tariff-centered strategy to revitalize domestic production.
Yet despite voting for Trump in November, Finn finds himself at odds with how the president is carrying out his tariff policies. While he supports the vision, Finn remains critical of how these trade policies have been executed.
“We did everything way too fast,” he said. Trump “should have prepared some businesses for this. And I don’t think anybody’s (prepared) for this because all this administration talked about was, ‘Everything’s going to be great.’ ”
The dramatic escalation of Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports — with rates soaring to 145% on select goods — creates significant hardship for Nevada’s trucking sector. Many local operators depend on consistent freight contracts from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which serve as the principal entry points for Chinese merchandise into American markets.
The effects of the tariffs have been swift and significant.
Just last week, these critical West Coast hubs experienced a striking 44% reduction in shipping traffic compared with the previous year’s figures, according to NBC Los Angeles.
Finn says about one-third of his company’s business comes from the port of Los Angeles. He’s already seen a 20% drop in trucks transloaded from the port.
“Some of the customers we normally deal with week to week said they probably won’t be moving much more freight until” the tariffs settle, Finn said.
Truline Corp. President Paul Truman operates at a larger scale than Finn, running a trucking company out of Las Vegas with a fleet of more than 300 trucks zipping between distribution centers and local stores — “anything from grocery to hardware,” Truman adds.
He said most major retailers are good at keeping inventory efficiently low, meaning there’s little backup for when trade gets disrupted. Truman said the lag time between products arriving at the port docks and making their way to Las Vegas stores could “be as short as two weeks.”
Shashi Nambisan, director of UNLV’s Transportation Research Center, gave a similar timeline. It takes three to four weeks for a Chinese product to get to a California port, and a few days to get it offloaded and on its way to Las Vegas.
“If the tariffs took effect as of early April, you’re going to be looking at the middle of May when you can see the ripple effects of that hit our store shelves,” Nambisan said.
Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, said on CNBC that the rush of imports before tariffs kicked in would give consumers a little more time before they see the effects.
Retailers, as of today, have around three to five weeks of full inventory in the tank, according to the port’s executive.
“Meaning that we could see empty store shelves, meaning that consumers will see higher prices,” Seroka told CNBC.
But for China, as Trump said in an interview with ABC News late last month, “at 145 (percent), they basically can’t do much business with the United States.”
His treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has said the same, calling the tariffs a de facto embargo.
Like Finn, Nambisan believes the Trump administration has moved far too quickly. It could take companies anywhere from a couple of months to a year to move their production out of China to a less-tariffed country.
Moving production to the U.S.? That’s at least a year, if not a few, to get production running with a workforce that can operate it, Nambisan said.
Paul Enos, CEO of the Nevada Trucking Association, is still hopeful. If Trump can ultimately bring American manufacturing back to life, it would be a shot in the arm for the country’s trucking industry, he said.
Prepping for a long haul
Truman let out a laugh when recalling a lender recently asking him about budgeting with the ever-shifting trade policy.
“I said, ‘Is anybody giving guidance this year?’ How can you give guidance in this type of market?” Truman asked. It’s “very hard to be proactive. You become very reactionary to the marketplace and just try to do the best job you can do.”
That’s been a common refrain for business owners, and he said anxiety among those in the trucking industry about what happens next is near universal. There are some levers to pull, like delaying expansion and purchases, though not all are easy to swallow, such as layoffs.
A CNBC poll of CEOs found a third expected to make job cuts this year due to tariffs. In another April poll, nearly two-thirds of CEOs said they expected a recession within the next six months.
Finn said it was impossible to prepare for the slowdowns at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach “because you don’t know what it’s going to do and how it’s going to hit.” He hasn’t started changing any of his business practices yet, saying he’ll likely make that decision in January.
Much of Finn’s business relies on conventions. The CES tech extravaganza each January sets the tone at the start of the year.
“As of right now, it looks pretty bleak,” Finn said. “I think a lot of people are pulling out (of) CES, so I think that’s going to be a sign that 2026 is going to be a rough start.”
Truman says he feels like he’s in a good position with growth last year and some new accounts to start 2025, but if the economy sours — like multiple institutions in Nevada believe will happen — “it’s going to affect everybody.”
Enos said he wasn’t worried about the trade war being prolonged. He highlighted the rough spot the trucking industry was in under President Joe Biden and that current economic conditions are only one of “myriad” concerns trucking companies deal with every day.
During the pandemic, Truman said the rounds of stimulus checks, increased unemployment benefits and small-business loans from the government injecting money into the economy increased demand for trucking — especially since people were largely staying at home.
But once demand fell again, the industry was left with too many trucks, he said. Data analysis firm CarrierOK reported that 88,000 trucking companies closed in 2023.
“From the environmental regulation side … they had to go out and buy expensive, environmentally compliant trucks,” Enos said, listing some of the ongoing challenges: “Insurance costs going up 30% year over year, the threat of lawsuits that can bankrupt the company even if they weren’t at fault for the particular accident.”
But Nambisan said a drop in shipping to Southern California’s ports would be proportional to its impact on Las Vegas’ trucking companies; a 25% drop in inflows would mean a 25% drop in transport along Interstate 15 between the two metro areas.
The impact wouldn’t stop there, he said.
“Think about the people they hire: the drivers, people who maintain their trucks, others who will be in the warehouse,” Nambisan said. “Then at each of these stores where we as consumers go to buy stuff, there are people who work in these stores to stock the store, so on and so forth.”
“It’s got a major ripple effect in the economy,” he added.
Finn, frustrated with how little Trump prepared businesses to deal with the economic ramifications of the trade war, said he wouldn’t pull the lever for Trump again if given the opportunity today.
That doesn’t mean he would’ve voted for Kamala Harris, however, saying she wouldn’t have done any better.
Enos, who also voted for Trump, hasn’t wavered in his support. There’s underlying optimism in the industry, he said, because of the strong position the United States could arrive at after whatever temporary pain the industry deals with.
“Donald Trump’s the president of the United States (and) is way more accomplished in making a multitude of deals than I am,” Enos said. “Sometimes you do (this) to have leverage and to gain leverage. So you know what? If there’s somebody I am going to trust to make deals on trade with the United States, it’s going to be him.”