{"id":464929,"date":"2026-09-15T22:56:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T22:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/464929\/"},"modified":"2026-09-15T22:56:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T22:56:10","slug":"imports-boomed-this-summer-in-anticipation-of-higher-costs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/464929\/","title":{"rendered":"Imports boomed this summer in anticipation of higher costs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite trade wars<\/a> and inflation<\/a>, America has been importing a lot of stuff. The Port of Long Beach in Southern California just logged its busiest August ever<\/a> and its fifth-biggest month ever. Right next door, the Port of Los Angeles just had its biggest summer ever<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The nation as a whole just logged its third-highest month for container imports<\/a>, which are commercial items \u2014 like what consumers buy on Amazon.<\/p>\n

Lisa Ellram, a supply chain management professor at Miami University in Ohio, said that one big reason behind this boom is that the economy is still pretty strong. \u201cI wouldn’t anticipate that consumers would still be buying things like they have been, but apparently they are,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Another reason: the economy is really uncertain, partly because the war in the Middle East keeps dragging on and dragging oil prices up<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Importers] want to lock into the rates now for anything that they think they might be needing in the future,\u201d Ellram said.<\/p>\n

Importers are also wary of ever-changing tariffs<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe uncertainty caused companies to start hedging, to start inventory front-loading,\u201d said Joseph Sarkis, a professor of management at Worcester Polytechnic Institute\u2019s Business School.<\/p>\n

Sarkis said the tariffs are not doing what the Trump administration wants them to do. <\/p>\n

\u201cThese tariffs are not stopping organizations [or] companies from purchasing from international sourcing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Those importers don\u2019t really have any alternatives. Rob Handfield, a professor of supply chain management at North Carolina State University, said that building domestic infrastructure could take a decade.<\/p>\n

\u201cTransitioning to a domestic manufacturing base isn’t easy, because we just don’t have that capacity,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

In part, it has been a good summer for imports because that time of year is usually good.<\/p>\n

\u201cAugust is traditionally a big month for imports,\u201d Handfield said, because it\u2019s the month when companies are setting up their inventories for holiday shopping.<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite trade wars and inflation, America has been importing a lot of stuff. The Port of Long Beach…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":464930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[6899,384,131,133,132,6828,23571],"class_list":["post-464929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-imports","tag-inflation","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-ports","tag-supply-chain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/464930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}