This is Planet Money from NPR.
The first ships with the 145% tariffed goods from China had just started pooling into US ports last week when,
just a few days later, the US announced that that mind-bendingly high tariff was now gone.
Paused.
The US and China agreed to temporarily bring the tariff way,
way, way back down from 145% on most Chinese imports to...
30%, though the tariff on things like cars and steel and aluminum is higher, about 50%.
And, you know, the deal came pretty quickly after talks in Geneva,
and it was maybe unexpected or maybe not at all unexpected
because the 145% tariff on China and China's retaliatory tariff on the U.S. was already threatening a global recession.
And in all the tit-for-tat back and forth, some companies caught really unlucky.
Those whose goods arrived at U.S. ports before the pause.
If a medium-sized company had a million dollars worth of goods imported,
they had to pay an extra million and a half dollars on top of that just in the tariff.
And had their ships arrived, like, a day later, their bill would be punched to the gut so much less.
And even though this unprecedented tariff only lasted a month,
it already inflicted its scars on the economy.
Today on the show,
what a month of 145% tariffs looked like and felt like for three people in the global economy whose lives were all affected and still will be.
We'll start at the biggest port in the Western Hemisphere.