Why Trump’s tariffs barely dented trade at the Port of Oakland
President Donald Trump’s promise of aggressive, sweeping tariffs when he took office last year led to fears of economic upheaval. But in Oakland, the results barely moved the needle.
There are two reasons, industry experts say, that the total number of shipped goods remained basically flat in 2025, according to the Port of Oakland’s annual trade report released Monday. First, the port proved surprisingly adaptable, maximizing efficiency and maintaining its relationships with shipping companies. And second, tariffs were far less punishing on trade than originally announced by the White House.
When blanket tariffs on many of the West Coast’s largest trading partners went into effect on “Liberation Day” on April 2, 2025, economists worried the policy could ignite a recession and spur new inflation, and longshoremen feared the tariffs would cause more empty containers and fewer shifts available for dock workers. Though tariffs caused a temporary drop in the stock market, the Port of Oakland recorded just a 0.4% year-over-year decline in total trade volume.
“It’s been challenging, but on the plus side, it has really encouraged communication between all the partners… to work through a very volatile environment,” said Carolyn Almquist, the maritime marketing manager at the Port of Oakland. “Trade is more resilient than we give it credit for.”
Stanford economist Richard Noll said that historically tariffs have been used within a limited scope to protect emerging industries, such as artificial intelligence. Trump has instead used tariffs like an “opening bid” in negotiations with other countries, posturing to extract maximum concessions under the threat of economic pain, both for real tariffs and those that could come in the future. The past year for the port served as an exercise in finding a new normal in shipping, and it comes as tariffs are being used as a new negotiating tool for the president.
“The essence of what’s going on is that the administration is behaving in international trade like it would be engaged in a negotiation of a real estate deal,” Noll said. “It’s strategic in a sort of sophomoric way, in the sense that this might work with grandma selling the family home, but it’s not going to work with sophisticated parties.”
The U.S. Supreme Court has yet to issue a decision on the legality of Trump’s use of tariffs. Major retailers like Costco have sued the Trump administration for imposing tariffs without the authority of Congress, demanding it provide a “full refund” of the tariffs paid on imports so far. The Bipartisan Policy Center said that U.S. gross tariff revenue in 2025 was $289 billion.
The Port of Oakland’s “hidden strength” through the trade has been an even mix of imports and exports, Almquist said. Shipping numbers shared exclusively with Bay Area News Group show that imports declined less than 1% and exports remained almost identical in 2025 as compared to 2024. This balance insulated Oakland from the swing seen at other ports.
“What has helped us remain flat year over year in terms of our volumes, rather than some of the huge swings that you’ve seen at the other ports, is that we are more import-export balanced,” Almquist said. “We have seen our import volumes soften, but in terms of the tariffs, it seems that we’ll be okay.”
Noll said the port’s 2025 results show its ability to weather fluctuations in policy as administrations come and go.
“If I’m in this industry,” Noll said, “I’m going to say, I don’t want to disrupt my long-term supply-chain business relationships. I’m going to keep going the way I’m going, making a few minor adjustments here and there. This policy is too unstable and unpredictable, and God knows what it’s going to be six months from now.”
But deeper in the numbers, there are signs that tariffs have made an impact. Port shipping data shows that loaded imports declined 12.8% year-over-year in December — typically when consumers spend the most — but that loss was buffered by exports increasing 10.9% year-over-year. Almquist explained that the decline in imports during the holiday season was caused by retailers shipping goods earlier in the season out of concern that additional tariffs might be announced. The port has also “tinkered” with how to create more efficiencies in trade like using larger shipments on fewer ships to counteract the larger expenses created by tariffs.
The nonpartisan Peterson Institute of International Economics found that higher U.S. tariff revenue had little correlation with lower import volume, showing a resilient American market that was undeterred by downstream tariff costs. But tariff-driven inflation has been minimal, Noll said, because the actual impact of the tariffs has been overstated. In fact, the National Bureau of Economic Research found that the actual rate of Trump’s tariffs has been less than half of those that were announced.
“The nature of the tariffs is such that it’s not something that would cause you to change your behavior by very much, because the magnitude isn’t as large as the rhetoric that went with it,” Noll said.
Almquist said California’s staple agricultural products are the source of strength for the Port of Oakland that other ports along the eastern seaboard do not have. The cornucopia of goods from the Central Valley, combined with the beef, pork and poultry that ship out of Oakland, has kept the port afloat while other ports across the U.S. have faltered, she said.
“What we export from the port area is high quality agricultural products, pistachios, almonds, a lot of refrigerated cargo, and people have continued to buy those exports,” Almquist said. “People are continuing to buy our high-quality goods, so we’ve been protected in that way.”