Sacha Pfeiffer visits Port Milwaukee to see how President Trump’s tariffs have affected the stream of items and impacted the regional financial system.

Transcript

SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:

As we heard from these early voters in Texas and from protection of the protests in France, the financial system and affordability are surging considerations globally. It’s also a concern regionally in Milwaukee, where I’m internet hosting this program tonight. If you look at a map, you understand the metropolis is positioned on a huge superhighway of water. Milwaukee is on Lake Michigan, half of the Great Lakes area, and that area is its own financial system. Cargo from around the world is shipped across the Great Lakes, and all that maritime commerce contributes to a regional financial system price about $9 trillion.

Now look at that map again. Four of the 5 nice lakes are shared between the United States and Canada. Those two international locations are now in an financial battle due to President Trump’s tariffs, and that battle is harming port cities like Milwaukee. That is why I discovered myself this week on a lengthy concrete pier on the port of Milwaukee, overlooking the huge expanse of Lake Michigan and speaking with port director Benji Timm.

BENJI TIMM: So the boat is coming from the East. You can see the breakwater. There’s a break in the breakwater out there. And there’s…

PFEIFFER: Slightly passage for boats to get through. Yeah.

TIMM: Yes, between the gentle – the two lighthouses. That’s where the vessels would come in. And if they’re going into our internal mooring basin, they’d go beneath the Hoan Bridge in the freeway. If they’re coming into one of our terminals here, they’d come straight in into one of these slips.

PFEIFFER: So whether they’re coming from Canada or Europe, that is the manner they get in.

TIMM: That’s our gateway.

PFEIFFER: Port Milwaukee does enterprise with more than 300 ships a 12 months that import items from all over.

TIMM: So there are metal beams on the terminal, and this metal came in from Luxembourg. It came in for a hospital mission from Minnesota. It’s unloaded from a vessel here, and then it’s loaded up onto vans and then trucked over to Minnesota.

(SOUNDBITE OF STEEL BANGING)

PFEIFFER: Can we not make this in the United States?

TIMM: That was a particular gauge of metal, I know.

PFEIFFER: I imply, and is that partly what the Trump administration hopes for finally, is that we can make this metal at dwelling? And by these tariffs, we won’t have to convey it in from Europe?

TIMM: That’s the thought, yeah, is that we enhance our manufacturing here. And again, I do not think anybody would argue with that, but we have to put the elements into place to get us to that level.

PFEIFFER: Over the previous 12 months, Timm watched anxiously as the Trump administration added or threatened tariffs on all types of objects – metal, auto components, salt, agricultural commodities, timber. The tariffs could come at any time, and that impacts the budgets and provide chains of numerous corporations that rely on this port.

What is your misery stage about the impression that tariffs are having on the Milwaukee financial system?

TIMM: It’s form of whiplash. You know, it’s – it has not been constant. When the administration makes an announcement, we pay attention very intently, and then we strive and determine out how it’ll have an effect on us. We strive not to freak out because oftentimes it’ll change.

PFEIFFER: Sometimes you’re inclined to freak out?

TIMM: Sometimes. You know, we strive and reserve the freak out. But…

PFEIFFER: Imported merchandise were all around us in warehouses and silos and huge domed containers. So we got in a van with Benji Timm and the mayor of Milwaukee, Cavalier Johnson, to get an up shut look.

(SOUNDBITE OF CAR DOOR CLOSING)

CAVALIER JOHNSON: This peanut butter unfold of tariffs just, you know, across the board, it’s form of – it’s dangerous.

PFEIFFER: Remember that metal? There is now a 50% tariff on overseas metal imports to the U.S.

We are passing by a delivery bay where it appears like, I do not know, metal twine – what are we seeing stacked up there?

TIMM: So these are coils of metal. That’s the tin plate metal that’s primarily imported from the Netherlands, and it comes here and is used in canning, like meals cans. There are a quantity of canning…

PFEIFFER: Things we see on grocery retailer cabinets – that’s how it begins, proper there.

TIMM: Exactly. Yep.

PFEIFFER: One of the issues that’s been tariffed is metal, and a lot of metal comes into Milwaukee. How has that affected the metal coming and going?

TIMM: So the metal that comes into Port Milwaukee is not produced by U.S. steelmakers, so it has to be imported. And the metal is down roughly 30%, and that’s form of systemwide. So it’s costly, and manufacturing is down. You know, prices are going up, so there are less gross sales total.

PFEIFFER: The aim of these tariffs by the Trump administration is to strive to have more manufacturing accomplished in the United States, and that will take time. When you speak to the companies in your state and your metropolis that are affected by the tariffs, how affected person are they feeling about ready to see if the tariffs have the payoff that the Trump administration hopes for?

TIMM: Well, that’s the factor, is that our companies and our customers – they should not be topic to the whims, the ups and downs, the back and forth, the unpredictability, the instability that’s taking place out of Washington.

PFEIFFER: And that instability can have worldwide ripple results.

All proper, so we are seeing a very massive ship. It is not a container ship. What are we seeing?

TIMM: So that’s a bulk service vessel. It’s from…

PFEIFFER: Bulk service?

TIMM: Bulk service, yeah. So they have bays within cargo holds within the vessel, where they retailer bulk supplies.

PFEIFFER: And did you begin to say it’s from Bulgaria?

TIMM: So the vessel itself is from Bulgaria, and it’s going to take the DDGs to Spain.

PFEIFFER: Do you think folks would be shocked to know that a ship from Bulgaria is stopping in Milwaukee to then ship issues to Spain?

TIMM: I do.

PFEIFFER: Near the Bulgarian boat are enormous mounds of something coated with tarps.

TIMM: So on the left, these are salt piles. So one of the largest commodities that Port Milwaukee brings in is salt, and that salt is used for street security. It’s used for part animal feed. It’s also used for water softeners. Last 12 months, we had a fairly harsh winter, and states as far-off as Kentucky, Minnesota, Iowa, were coming here to get salt.

PFEIFFER: So much of Milwaukee salt comes from Canada. The Trump administration wished to put tariffs on that, too.

When you heard that salt Well, salt and many other merchandise may be tariffed, what was your concern for Milwaukee?

TIMM: So because salt is the largest commodity that we import here, that would have had a important impression on not only the metropolis of Milwaukee’s finances, but also other municipalities’ budgets.

PFEIFFER: The Trump administration eliminated salt from its tariff listing after lobbying from Congress.

But back on the pier, Timm informed me the uncertainty is destabilizing.

TIMM: Everyone needs predictability. They need to be in a position to plan for the future. They need to be in a position to plan, you know, acquisitions, enhancements, investments in their companies. And that’s onerous to do when costs change so often.

PFEIFFER: What is your fear stage about whether this will take a change of administration to enhance the state of affairs, whether the Trump administration may finally decrease the tariffs and it will create some reduction for Milwaukee?

TIMM: Yeah, my largest fear is our relationship with Canada and ensuring that we preserve that robust. So they’re Wisconsin’s largest buying and selling associate. They’re a important half of our financial system here in Milwaukee.

PFEIFFER: What do they…

The U.S. and Canada are so interlinked by the Great Lakes that a ship going between the two international locations can cross the worldwide border 27 occasions. They’re companions.

TIMM: It’s actually attention-grabbing. Because there’s such a tight relationship between the United States and Canada, we have a lot of the same corporations on both sides of the border, and primarily, we commerce elements, and we commerce tools back and forth. And when you have disruptions like tariffs, when you have other disruptions in the transportation community, it can be actually dangerous and actually form of just sluggish down enterprise. So I’d…

PFEIFFER: President Trump is attempting to use tariffs to reshape world commerce and shield the U.S. financial system. But that’s leaving folks like Port Milwaukee director Benji Timm to reassure his metropolis’s overseas buying and selling companions. He has to preserve items flowing nationwide and worldwide. He has to brace for merchandise all of a sudden turning into more scarce or more costly, and he has no thought when that volatility will finish.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

PFEIFFER: Stay with us for more protection from Wisconsin, an vital bellweather state, where we are this weekend just forward of the midterm elections.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

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