Connect with us

Economics

The impact of the Baltimore bridge disaster

Published

on

Listen to this story.
Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android.

Your browser does not support the <audio> element.

Editor’s note (March 27th): Police in Maryland said that the six people who remain missing following the Key Bridge’s collapse are now presumed dead.

THE VIDEO footage of the collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge was shocking. At around 1.30am on March 26th, when a container ship rammed into one of its support columns, the central section of the 1.6-mile (2.6km) structure collapsed into the Patapsco river below, sending people and vehicles into the water. Workers repairing potholes were on the bridge at the time. “Never would you think that you would see…the Key Bridge tumble down like that,” Baltimore’s mayor, Brandon Scott, told reporters. “It looked like something out of an action movie.”

Maryland’s governor declared a state of emergency. Six people are thought to have drowned. Beyond the human toll, the immediate questions concerned the causes and consequences of the disaster—one of the most significant in America for decades, according to Jerry Hajjar, president of the Structural Engineering Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). The FBI has said that terrorism was unlikely to have been behind it.

The 300-metre-long ship, the Dali, was heading from Baltimore to Colombo, in Sri Lanka, when it “lost propulsion”, according to an unclassified Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency report. The crew reportedly notified officials that a bridge collision was likely. Eyewitnesses say the ship’s lights flickered just before impact. Locals heard a loud thunder-like rumble in the middle of the night. “The house started shaking,” says Cyrus Gilbert, a resident of Locust Point, directly across the harbour.

Investigators will want to know why the Dali lost control. Nada Sanders of Northeastern University, an expert on the global supply chain, says that the ship had an inspection issue last June. According to Equasis, a shipping database, Chilean authorities gave it a “deficiency” for propulsion and auxiliary machinery (though no deficiencies were recorded in a follow-up inspection in New York).

The bridge could have been structurally sound. A report by the ASCE gave Maryland a B for its bridges and a B- for ports in 2020. “Bridges are not designed to withstand lateral loads from ships on their columns,” said Masoud Hayatdavoodi, of the University of Dundee’s School of Science and Engineering. “There is no question that the bridge would collapse due to the impact on the columns.”

President Joe Biden promises to foot the bill to get the bridge rebuilt as soon as possible. But the impact on the city is already being felt. The port is closed until further notice, causing ripples beyond the harbour. The port supports over 15,000 direct jobs, and roughly 140,000 jobs are linked to it in some way. Daraius Irani, of the Regional Economic Studies Institute at Maryland’s Towson University, says the port closure alone will probably cost roughly $50m a day in lost activity.

The harbour is an important link in America’s supply chain. More than 50 ocean carriers make nearly 1,800 annual visits. It is especially important in the automotive world. Its private and public terminals handled nearly 850,000 cars and light trucks in 2023, the most of any American port. It also ranked first in the country in handling farm and construction machinery, as well as imported sugar and gypsum, and ranks second for coal exports.

If another port experienced a hiccup (because of labour disputes, say, or cyber-attacks), the toll on the American economy could be severe. For now, though, the national impact is likely to be limited. Other ports, such as New York-New Jersey and Virginia, should be able to pick up the slack. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s, a ratings agency, says the national economy will be OK, but Baltimore will suffer. Commuters and lorry drivers will face disruption. Last year the bridge served 34,000 commercial and passenger vehicles a day, about 15% of traffic in the area.

The harbour has long been a symbol of resilience. In the war of 1812 against the British, the Americans successfully defended Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbour, an event immortalised by Francis Scott Key in his 19th-century poem that became the national anthem. The tragedy will give the city and port time to implement upgrades that would be harder when the port is active. Baltimore may emerge with a better bridge and harbour.

Stay on top of American politics with The US in brief, our daily newsletter with fast analysis of the most important electoral stories, and Checks and Balance, a weekly note from our Lexington columnist that examines the state of American democracy and the issues that matter to voters.

Economics

The Trump train slows

Published

on

THESE DAYS are dire and dour for Democrats. But April 1st brought a brief reprieve—and not because of jokes. That was the day that the most expensive judicial election in American history in the battleground state of Wisconsin ended in a decisive triumph for the left-leaning candidate. It had drawn $100m of spending, including an estimated $25m from Elon Musk who also, perhaps unhelpfully, personally campaigned in the state. The same day, two special elections in Florida for vacant congressional seats took place in safe Republican districts. Although they did not win, Democrats improved their margins by 17 and 20 percentage points compared with the general elections held just five months ago. Cory Booker, a Democratic senator from New Jersey, staged a one-man protest on the floor of the Senate, excoriating President Donald Trump’s administration for 25 hours straight—a stunt, to be sure, but one that demonstrated proof of life in a party that supporters worried had gone limp.

Continue Reading

Economics

How did the U.S. arrive at its tariff figures?

Published

on

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a “Make America Wealthy Again” trade announcement event in the Rose Garden at the White House on April 2, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images

Markets have turned their sights on how U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration arrived at the figures behind the sweeping tariffs on U.S. imports declared Wednesday, which sent global financial markets tumbling and sparked concerns worldwide.

Trump and the White House shared a series of charts on social media detailing the tariff rates they say other countries impose on the U.S. Those purported rates include the countries’ “Currency Manipulation and Trade Barriers.”

An adjacent column shows the new U.S. tariff rates on each country, as well as the European Union.

Chart of reciprocal tariffs.

Courtesy: Donald Trump via Truth Social

Those rates are, in most cases, roughly half of what the Trump administration claims each country has “charged” the U.S. CNBC could not independently verify the U.S. administration’s data on these duties.

It didn’t take long for market observers to try and reverse engineer the formula — to confusing results. Many, including journalist and author James Surowiecki, said the U.S. appeared to have divided the trade deficit by imports from a given country to arrive at tariff rates for individual countries.

Such methodology doesn’t necessarily align with the conventional approach to calculate tariffs and would imply the U.S. would have only looked at the trade deficit in goods and ignored trade in services.

For instance, the U.S. claims that China charges a tariff of 67%. The U.S. ran a deficit of $295.4 billion with China in 2024, while imported goods were worth $438.9 billion, according to official data. When you divide $295.4 billion by $438.9 billion, the result is 67%! The same math checks out for Vietnam.

“The formula is about trade imbalances with the U.S. rather than reciprocal tariffs in the sense of tariff level or non-tariff level distortions. This makes it very difficult for Asian, particularly the poorer Asian countries, to meet US demand to reduce tariffs in the short-term as the benchmark is buying more American goods than they export to the U.S., ” according to Trinh Nguyen, senior economist of emerging Asia at Natixis.

“Given that U.S. goods are much more expensive, and the purchasing power is lower for countries targeted with the highest levels of tariffs, such option is not optimal. Vietnam, for example, stands out in having the 4th largest trade surplus with the U.S., and has already lowered tariffs versus the U.S. ahead of tariff announcement without any reprieve,” Nguyen said.

The U.S. also appeared to have applied a 10% levy for regions where it is running a trade surplus.

"Absolutely nothing good coming out" of Trump tariff announcement, veteran economist Rosenberg says

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative laid out its approach on its website, which appeared somewhat similar to what cyber sleuths had already figured out, barring a few differences.

The U.S.T.R. also included estimates for the elasticity of imports to import prices—in other words, how sensitive demand for foreign goods is to prices—and the passthrough of higher tariffs into higher prices of imported goods.

“While individually computing the trade deficit effects of tens of thousands of tariff, regulatory, tax and other policies in each country is complex, if not impossible, their combined effects can be proxied by computing the tariff level consistent with driving bilateral trade deficits to zero. If trade deficits are persistent because of tariff and non-tariff policies and fundamentals, then the tariff rate consistent with offsetting these policies and fundamentals is reciprocal and fair,” the website reads.

This screenshot of the U.S.T.R. webpage shows the methodology and formula that was used in greater detail:

A screenshot from the website of the Office of the United States Trade Representative.

Some analysts acknowledged that the U.S. government’s methodology could give it more wiggle room to reach an agreement.

“All I can say is that the opaqueness surrounding the tariff numbers may add some flexibility in making deals, but it could come at a cost to US credibility,” according to Rob Subbaraman, head of global macro research at Nomura.

 — CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger contributed to this piece.

Continue Reading

Economics

Analysts react to latest U.S. levies

Published

on

Charts that show the “reciprocal tariffs” the U.S. is charging other countries are on display at the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House on April 2, 2025 in Washington, DC. 

Alex Wong | Getty Images

U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday laid out the “reciprocal tariff” rates that more than 180 countries and territories will face under his sweeping new trade policy.

The announcement sent stocks tumbling and prompted investors to seek refuge in assets perceived to be safe.

Analysts generally had a pessimistic take on the announcement, with some even predicting an increased risk of a recession for the U.S.

Here is a compilation of reactions from experts and analysts:

Tai Hui, APAC Chief Market Strategist, J.P. Morgan Asset Management

“Today’s announcement could potentially raise U.S. average tariff rates to levels not seen since the early 20th century. If these tariffs persist, they could materially impact inflation, as U.S. manufacturing struggles to ramp up capacity and supply chains pass on costs to consumers. For instance, advanced semiconductor manufacturers in Taiwan may not absorb tariff costs without viable substitutes.

“The scale of these tariffs raises concerns about growth risks. U.S. consumers may cut back on spending due to pricier imports, and businesses might delay capital expenditures amid uncertainty about the tariffs’ full impact and potential retaliation from trade partners.”

David Rosenberg, President and founder of Rosenberg Research

“There are no winners in a global trade war. And when people have to realize, when you hear this clap trap about how consumers in United States are not going to bear any brunt. It’s all going to be the foreign producer. I roll my eyes whenever I hear that, because it shows a zero understanding of how trade works, because it is the importing business that pays the tariff, not the exporting country.

And a lot of that will get transmitted into the consumer, so we’re in for several months of a very significant price shock for the American household sector.”

Anthony Raza, Head of Multi-Asset Strategy, UOB Asset Management

“They’ve come up with the most extreme numbers that we can’t even comprehend. How they’re coming up with these? And then in terms of timing, I think we were hopeful that maybe this would be something that was rolled out over the course of a year, that would allow like time for negotiations or whatever. But it does seem like the timing is much more immediate and is, again, worse than our worst-case type scenario in terms of flexibility.”

David Roche, Strategist, Quantum Strategy

“These tariffs are not transitional. They are core to President Trump’s beliefs. They mark the shift from globalisation to isolationist, nationalist policies – and not just for economics. The process will last several years and be felt for decades. There will be spillovers into multiple policy domains such as geopolitics.

Right now, expect retaliation, not negotiation by the EU (targeting U.S. services) and China (focusing on U.S. strategic and business interests). The Rose Garden tariffs will cement the bear market. They will cause global stagflation as well as U.S. and EU recession.”

Shane Oliver, Head of Investment Strategy and Chief Economist, AMP

“Our rough calculation is that the 2nd April announcement will take the US average tariff rate to above levels seen in the 1930s after the Smoot/Hawley tariffs which will in turn add to the risk of a US recession – via a further blow to confidence and supply chain disruptions – and a bigger hit to global growth.

“The risk of a US recession is probably now around 40% and global growth could be pushed towards 2% (from around 3% currently) depending on how significant retaliation is and how countries like China respond with policy stimulus.”

Tom Kenny, Senior International Economist, ANZ

“Today’s announced US reciprocal tariffs are worse than expected. The effective tariff rate on U.S. merchandise imports is likely to climb to the 20-25% range, the highest since the early 1900s.

Yields on inflation-indexed bonds were higher and equities sold off after the announcement, suggesting the market thinks these tariffs will hurt growth and add to inflation. Market pricing of the federal funds rate points to cuts from the Federal Reserve coming sooner.”

Continue Reading

Trending