Trump can ruin one American holiday after the other with his trade war

The year is usually very predictable for an owner of a shop in party supplies. After the turn of the year, Jacob Mok will first get busy with Valentine’s Day in February, he says in his LT Giftshop in Los Angeles. « Soon we will get Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, then soon the diploma ceremonies, then 4th of July and towards the end of the year Halloween and Christmas. »

For all those celebrations, the Americans import large quantities of party supplies throughout the year. They often only have to last once or not for a long time – and therefore should preferably be cheap. Synthetic teddy bears with hearts on it, artificial flowers, ‘I love you mom’ mugs, balloons with ‘best dad’, American flags, plastic spinning, fake Christmas trees: in Moks store it is-in the right season-all available.

But currently nothing is predictable, the Korean-American shopkeeper complains. Like a kind of Grinch (a Christmas-having fantasy bones), Donald Trump threatens to turn one party after the other with his trade war against China. From the Sjerps with ‘Class of 2025’ who graduates hang out themselves until the small gift bags with dollar bills printed on it: the labels in Moks store always say ‘Made in China. ‘

His store is located in the Toy District, a neighborhood of twelve blocks in Downtown La Taiwanese and Vietnamese immigrants started here from the eighties shops with toys that they imported from China via the large port of the Milloon City on the Pacific coast. Soon consumer electronics were added.

The original Asian traders were joined by Latino colleagues. They too get their merchandise mainly from China, and some from Mexico. In the Toy District you can also go for (forbidden for a few years in California) fireworks. In a fine -meshed network of alleys behind Moks Winkel is an informal street market, where the rocks and decorative pots are openly displayed. They are also largely Chinese.

For Mok, who voted for Donald Trump for the first time in November, the trade war came as a big surprise. He knows that the Republican in the campaign endlessly repeated that he would punish ‘unfair’ China with taxes. « But I didn’t think he would play it so high. The rate is now 145 percent. Nobody could do that? »

The Toy District partly consists of a fine -meshed network of street markets. There is also for sale (in California) fireworks, mostly from China.

Photo Jae C. Hong/AP

He does not import himself, but buys from other wholesalers in the neighborhood. With its suppliers, some products are already sold out and what is still available is increasing in price. « Some had already ordered, but I did not have their orders unload. » He does not want to say whether he would again vote for Trump.

A Plan-B and Plan-C

Where Mok could not build extra stock in the absence of financial reserves, his neighbor and competitor Luis miss himself prepared. « Before Trump took office, I bought ahead for $ 50,000. I can move forward until the end of the year. » Mass born in Mexico has rented a storage space on the outskirts of the city to park that stock.

Mass has a sophisticated strategy, he says. « I’m going to keep my prices right and hope that my competitors cannot do that, so that I get more customers. » He also needs it, because things have been running badly lately. « And that too is Trump’s fault, » he says, about the man he also voted in November.

Less of parties is published by the fear that has broken out among many customers about Trumps deportation policy. « Those who are vulnerable to deportation will no longer come. People are afraid to go outside, no longer dare to go to work and have less money. » Let alone dare to give a massive party for one quinceañera (fifteenth birthday) or first communion.

Some of his customers buy in Large to resell products themselves elsewhere in California, for example on the street or in markets. « Half of them have no papers and I hardly see them anymore. »

Mass thinks he can sing Trumps trade war. « I expect that it will be over with China in three to six months. That they will conclude an agreement, whereby Trump will drag in good conditions for the US. » And otherwise he has already thought ahead about a plan-B. « I can live in my country house and rent out my house in the city. »

And if even that doesn’t work, he also has a Plan-C: back to Mexico. « White Americans also retire there, because it is so cheap there. If I sell everything here, I can live there as a God. »

Cancellation sale

A few doors away, Sally González has a placard on the shop window with ‘cancellation sale’. She had already decided to grow up for Trumps import duties. « The neighborhood is deteriorating too fast, » she says. The homeless people are raising from the adjacent junkie enclave Skid Row and its neighbors are increasingly wholesalers who sell packaging material for the flowering Californian cannabis industry. « Do you know what kind of people put on that? » Says as she packs products.

She wants to start again somewhere else in the city. But not yet. She gets her merchandise – mostly wooden and wicker ornaments to listen to a party – for « 100 percent from Mexico, » she says proudly.

She had to pay 25 percent import duties about the last trailer that she brought from that southern neighbor. That rate is currently reduced to 10 percent. But on Thursday, Trump threatened to increase it again, this time as a pressure agent in a dragging water conflict between Mexico and the US. « This is clearly not the time to start a case. »

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