I was at the US Mexico border today. It was Shocking.

[Scruffy1]

I was at the Rio Bosque Wildlife Refuge jus south of the El Paso water Treatment Facility right next to the Zaragosa border truck crossing. It was about 4pm when there is usually a line of Semi's a half mile long to get on Pan American then to Loop 375. Today truck traffic was so light that I could sometimes see 2 trucks at the same time, sometimes none at all. I couldn't find the daily numbers online only monthly, but I'm guessing a drop of more than 50%. This is going to bankrupt a whole lot of trucking companies in the US and also cut into rail revenue because a lot of stuff coming out of Mexico either comes by rail out of Laredo/Nueve Laredo or is transferred to rail after crossing the border. Spotted a male Black Chin hummingbird and what was probably an ICE vehicle, too.

[Leghorn21]

1. Thanks for posting, Scruffy 1

I love reading the anecdotal, on-the-ground reports from DUers I probably won’t see anywhere else —

Much appreciated!!

[OrlandoDem2]

2. Hold on to your wallets. We are headed for a deep recession!

From 2.4% 4thQ growth to .3% contraction is steep.

The first quarter was before “Liberation Day”.

We are now one-third thru the 2nd Q.

No idea when the layoff start but they are coming.

[gab13by13]

5. Listening to Malcolm Nance today

on freespeechtv.org. Nance said that many ships from China were on the way before the big tariff fight started. Nance said that the last ship from China will arrive on May 10th and then after that none are scheduled.

[littlemissmartypants]

9. Its not just China that we are losing. ..

I have been looking up MSD sheets on things that I use to find manufacturers. My tuna comes from Thailand, soap France, bleach Canada, dog treats Australia and on and on. It's really opened my eyes.

People have no idea what's coming.

[Woodycall]

18. "People have no idea what's coming"

That's putting it very mildly...

[OMGWTF]

14. I drove past the Port of Seattle today. There were two ships in the harbor. TWO!!!

Rethuglicans ALWAYS fk up EVERYTHING and then the Dems have to clean up their mess. AGAIN, and AGAIN and AGAIN.

[live love laugh]

19. Democrats can't clean this up.

[zorbasd]

48. And then complain that Dems can't clean it up

fast enough, saying they're incompetent. Same old effing game for 40 years.

[BidenRocks]

53. Recovery will take years AFTER

the last magat is dead or they disappear.
Rebuilding trust starts when the reasons for that loss are gone.
Germany after the war, for example.
Trusting America OR Americans is not a good move.
We are a fucked up country of uneducated morons.

[AntiFascist]

52. The immediate earnings reports may be high...

since people are panic buying before the tariffs really hit. Auto resellers have been constantly promoting sales at relatively low prices before tariffs.

But, once the earning reports come in post tariffs, that's when a recession/depression may begin.

[Maru Kitteh]

3. Wow! I remember that crossing. I used to live on Alameda in the 80's.

I can’t imagine it being totally empty like that, even back then.

[Mark.b2]

4. I work for a large intermodal provider. After a quite strong q1...

we started to see volumes recede noticeably three weeks ago with USA/Canada and USA/Mexico transborder and SoCal tranloaded vol. Retailer volumes indicate consumers are slacking off.

I deal with railroads in my role. Their service performance has been improving since last fall. That’s rarely good. When trains dont have enough freight, they go faster and performance gets better.

It wouldnt hurt if truck capacity tightened some. I’ve seen results from some large bids recently. There are carriers out there willing to haul good freight way too cheaply. Good for us in intermodal, but it takes time.

Conversely, I ws in Florida for a long weekend. Airports looked like the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. People are spending money; I just wished it was more on things that required freight transportation! LOL

[dalton99a]

7. +1

[UTUSN]

6. K&R

[markodochartaigh]

8. Listening to Wall Street and banking pundits

give prognostications of 40-60% chance of a recession makes me wonder if they are delusional. Either they really drank the maga Kool aid or they are just flat out lying. The only question is recession or depression? Trump didn't shoot the economy in the foot, he shot it in the guts, and now we will all see it bleed out.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

10. They are so hard-wired for normal condtions that they are unable to see that this is not normal. . . nt

[Lonestarblue]

31. Too many people, including those in the media, have always treated Trump as normal.

That in spite of ample evidence that he is not normal and never has been. Had he not inherited many millions, I doubt he would even be in business today and few corporations would have kept him as an employee because of his constant lying and manipulation of data.

We need top business leaders to stop being fearful that Trump will attack them and their companies and publicly comment on his irrational policies. We also need Republicans in Congress to impeach and convict him for the laws he has broken and for willful destruction of the US economy, but I’m more likely to find a purple unicorn than I am to see Republicans grow a spine.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

32. If enough people & companies stand up to him, there will be too many targets for him & maga

There is safety in numbers. There are a few now, but we can't know where the tipping point is, can't know when there will be a rush of public condemnation.

Mass action and individual resistance seems and feels lonely until it isn't.

I have much respect for the brave people who stand up in big and small ways.

[Henry203]

54. He would have been a serial murderer.

A Ted Buddy type.

[JanMichael]

56. My boss seems to be that way.

A dem for sure but pretty Pollyanna like.

[Amaryllis]

11. Delusional why, becasue it is higher percent than that?

[markodochartaigh]

13. Yes, 100% intuitively obvious to

the most casual observer.

[iemanja]

12. They think he's going to make deals

and the tariffs will come down. That’s what my financial advisor told me.

[kerry-is-my-prez]

20. Trump won't until there is a flat out Depression. He is stubborn, can't ever admit he's wrong and tariffs are his "pet

project.” It will take a lot to knock him off this tariff bit. Maybe empty shelves and huge price increases. Or maybe he wants to see everything fail and then declare martial law and become a “total” dictator.
I sold almost all my stock when he ended up with the presidency because he kept talking about tariffs and I knew that would be a disaster. Then, when the market went up one day, I sold most of the rest of my stock for a small loss. I count myself very lucky. I hope your advisor was smart enough to sell a lot of your stock before they had the big crashes. I’m staying away from the market until the crazy man is gone. I would too if I were you. To figure out what is happening in the stock market, you have to know psychology and know Trumps psyche. Luckily, I’m in the field of psychology and am using those principles right now and not my normal investing behavior. Trumps irrational behavior that makes no rational sense is totally controlling the market. Trump is happy with how things are going, he has total power, he’s getting no flak from his supporters or many of the leaders in the investment world because they’re scared to make him angry.

[iemanja]

23. Nope, I didn't sell

And now it’s too low to sell.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

44. Too low / high depends on expectations, risk & time. * Be Here Now. * "Too late" is not the best way to think of things.

Think about the possibility of cutting your losses / ride your winners. Timing markets is difficult and emotional. You have to ignore emotions and make rational judgments. Always think of reward-risk ratios and consider time scales with regard to need for money.

Forget what you paid for stuff. Be here now. Make your best decision as to outlook for where you think the market might go from here. Think as if you had nothing and then a fairy gifted you your current holdings this morning. You might wish to preserve capital for later, use it now, or you might wish to invest.

If you think it is going down a bit and then will recover, ... if you expect economic conditions to improve before it goes down much, then probably hold. Likewise if you think it will go up from here. That puts the reward-risk ratio more in favour of reward. But even if you hold those opinions, you might for other considerations weight the risk factor larger. For example, if you anticipate a need for money (cash) in the near or medium term, perhaps for desirable or anticipated expenses or imminent retirement, you might consider taking some money out.

But if you think economic conditions will significantly worsen, and that the market may in time react with a significant downturn (say more than 15% down from here) consider selling now and buying lower later. There the reward of holding goes down and the risk goes up. I sold my stock fund in January and moved into a bond fund and money because I thought the risk was outweighing the reward and I have my own circumstances.

If you are youngish (say less than 50), you might decide to wait for a drop and a return, but that can take a few years and even sometimes as long as a decade or more to get back to even.

This is not financial advice, it is advice about thinking. Speak with a certified financial planner and explain your outlook, your needs, your time horizons and your risk tolerance. If the discussion and advice doesn't make sense (many are locked into the all-purpose all-situations 60/40 mentality), then seek more advice.

[iemanja]

46. Where do you put your money when you pull it out of the market?

[Bernardo de La Paz]

47. I said. . . . nt

[70sEraVet]

34. Trump has been SO toxic and insulting, that many countries don't......

WANT to make a deal with him. I think Canadians, for instance, are united in their despisement. They will boycott U.S. products, they will refuse to visit U.S. cities as long as the Bloated Baboon is President.
Citizens of Denmark and Panama may share that level of hatred. And there will be others.

[roamer65]

22. NBER eventually will declare the start of the recession in March 2025.

It usually takes them one year to nail the start.

[Conjuay]

33. Do you mean March 2026? N/T

[roamer65]

50. No.

Negative GDP started in Q1 2025.

Just like it started in Q4 2007.

[LiberalArkie]

25. The only thing they are looking at is their tax cuts.

Nothing else. Lost sight of the big picture.

[Callie1979]

27. Because trump can change his mind on a whim & stop all the uncertainty.

Look what happened a few weeks ago when he caved
I expect he'll come out with a few "deals" that aren't much but will be touted as the greatest EVER

[cadoman]

15. a lot of Chinese manufacturing is passed through Mexico

So would not surprise me if the mango mafia had targeted it for tariffs and other illegal actions.

The problem is it'll be us who pay, when the shelves are not stocked with critical Chinese and Mexican products.

[AllaN01Bear]

38. howdi

it has always me since our companies shiupped our manufaacuring base to china to avoid paying us workers wages . the chickens have come back to roost.

[cadoman]

45. what's critical to remember is we don't have the people to do those jobs any more

Factory jobs, farming jobs, manufacturing, jobs where you stand all day in a dreary facility. Now China does those jobs for us at exceptional rates and with efficiency that we can rarely hope to match.

It would take years to train and hire Americans for that work and frankly we couldn't be paid a living rate to do it.

[haele]

57. Most OTC pharmaceuticals... Ibuprofen, muscle creams...

Antifungals, Anti-bacterials,cold medications, vitamins - a good percentage of the chemicals that make up brand name compounds, even the "natural versions" are made in China.
They may be mixed together with the inert components and containerized elsewhere - Puerto Rico, the Marianas, Dominican Republic, but even the bottles, tubes, and packaging is made in China.
Other products include soaps, shampoos, toothpaste...diapers...
A lot of Americans are going to be finding only expired or "seconds" OTC Health and Beauty Products at the mainstream stores - if they can find them at all - not just the bodegas and Dollar General type stores by Labor Day, even if he claims victory and drops the tariffs by Forth of July.

[live love laugh]

16. The ports are empty the crossing traffic is down.... I stocked up at Costco today for this very reason.

[róisín_dubh]

17. Similar experience at...

Watertown/Thousand Islands a few weeks back.
It was empty, simply devoid of cars and semis.

It was very eerie

[roamer65]

21. My gut feeling about this is eerily similar to very late 2007.

I could feel it coming. I knew it was coming.

The only doubt I had was about the severity and duration.

It surpassed my expectations and this one will too.

[0rganism]

24. The leopards are preparing for another face buffet, this one's gonna be pretty huge

RIP economy. We the Pampered People of the American middle class have to some degree forgotten the bite of gripping irreversible poverty and the misery of breadlines. Learning together will be such fun for the whole family.

No mistake, F47 is in no way capable of navigating the stupidly dangerous waters into which he's sailed the ship of state. Even if he admitted tomorrow that everything he said about tariffs was bullshit and stopped implementation immediately, he and his teams of toxic twits are neither competent nor ethical enough to fix the problems they created. Naturally, F47 will never admit error, which in turn requires their next move to be top-notch PR so they can shift the blame before the pitchforks come out.

A strong, tactical, intelligent opposition party with a bone to pick might be able to set some traps in advance of the inevitable, and take initiative on focusing media coverage in the right directions. There are probably dozens of former federal workers who'd be happy to provide guidance as to where the storm will hit earliest and hardest.

Meanwhile...

[LiberalArkie]

26. I do not think the heritage foundation can ever admit that

They know nothing about anything. Millers hate will only go so far.

[Javaman]

28. the American public are all standing on a beach and see a rather big wave approaching.

sadly, the American public is too stupid to get out of the way.

when the thing crashes in about a week, it will be bad. very bad.

[roscoeroscoe]

29. Ground Truth

Nothing like observation on the scene. Hey, let's get some of those famous rolled tacos!

[Johnny2X2X]

30. Imports

So there was a large surge of imprts being bought, especially large ticket items, people knew the tariffs were coming and wanted to beat them. So imports normally lessen GDP growth, but this is kind of an artifical import surge, I don't think normal rules apply.

Going from +2.4% 1Q to -0.3% the next is a steep drop off. Especially when you consider that the economy was still going strong in January and into February.I think there's some thought Q2 will be a bounce back in the number because of that import factor, but I am not so sure. I think think the economy is always fickle and I think people have stopped spendning, companies have put on hold most plans to expand and invest, and people are just preparing for the worst right now.

And I don't think the removal of all of the tariffs at once today would stop the damage that has been done and stop a recession at some point this year. This was a recession of choice. And the job losses are going to be severe and we won't recover them for years.

[nitpicked]

41. IMO

We'll have to wait until next quarter's numbers come out.

[Johnny2X2X]

42. Actually Q3 IMO

Q2 could be skewed some too.

And I read people thinking this is like a faucet, it is not, the tariffs could end tomorrow and the economy is still going to be being hurt by them several monsths from now. The damage has already been done, new damage is being done every day.

[Emile]

35. Back when I drove cross country we would drop

and hook trailers all the time in the drop lots along the border. You're right, this will cost trucking companies a lot of money. I also bet most of these trucking companies managers voted for Trump.

[Martin68]

36. I'll bet you those trucking companies voted for Trump.

[AllaN01Bear]

37. without actually closing the borders , thru tarrifs trump has closed thge borders.

[Ping Tung]

39. Will the Black Market soon be added to the markets?

Will rationing soon be established for the proletariat?

[Exp]

40. Owning the Libs! (sarcasm)

[maxsolomon]

43. Is Rio Bosque the area where Josh Brolin hid the money in No Country For Old Men?

When he went to Mexico to get stitched up?

[lame54]

49. Any military?

[bucolic_frolic]

51. I'm thinking the uncertainty and shock is max at this time

There may be a rebound when supply chains catch up to demand. The problem with that rebound idea is there may be little demand. Could be shipments of some goods happen 2ce a year, if at all. Or smaller orders handled by FedEx, UPS or the like.

[aggiesal]

55. I had cousins that graduated from Riverside High School n/t