With a bit of a stop and start, America has more tariffs today than it did on Liberation Day, April 2. Since that time, customs duties collected have increased dramatically, but not enough to replace the income tax (yet, anyway).
And despite dire warnings that trade would cease, traffic at America’s two busiest ports, Long Beach and L.A., hasn’t suffered terribly.
And so far, there’s no indication that railroad traffic is suffering from a lack of economic momentum. You can see in the chart below the four-week moving average of cyclical carloads. Each line on the chart represents one year of rail traffic measured weekly. The purple line is 2025, and as you can see, after a slow start to the year, it is now outpacing each of the last five years.
Now remember, Your Survival Guy is not in the predictions business. These indicators could simply be lagging, and America could be in for a tariff-induced slowdown in which the ports see lower traffic and trains aren’t moving as much cargo around the country. But so far, that hasn’t happened, despite the dire warnings of imminent catastrophe.
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