(OPINION) If you are going to need anything made in China, I would buy it now while you still can. Many companies have already decided that it no longer makes any economic sense to import Chinese-made products into the United States because tariff rates are so high.

As a result, there are certain things that will soon no longer be available to U.S. consumers. On Monday, when I posted an article warning about “empty shelves” in the months ahead, some people thought that I was exaggerating.

But of course the truth is that I was not exaggerating at all. On Tuesday, the CEOs of Walmart, Target, Home Depot and Lowe’s specifically warned President Trump that store shelves all over the country could “soon be empty” during a meeting at the White House…

The CEOs of Walmart, Target, Home Depot and Lowe’s, all of whom delivered a blunt message about interruptions in the supply chain and its effects on consumers, were invited to the White House as part of an ongoing internal campaign to make the case to Trump about the real-world impact of his policies, administration officials said.

Trump’s tariffs have placed significant pressure on the retail sector. The business leaders warned that store shelves across America could “soon be empty,” two people familiar with the meeting said, as they presented a dire economic picture that could come into sharper view within weeks.

Those CEOs are not bluffing. Our biggest retailers normally import massive amounts of goods from China, and there is no easy short-term way to replace that production.

According to Axios, the CEOs “flat out told him [Trump] the prices aren’t going up, they’re steady right now, but they will go up”. They also told President Trump that “shelves will be empty” if current tariff levels persist.

I am so glad that President Trump is getting input from these CEOs. That is very important.

The CEO of Walmart reportedly told President Trump that his supply chains are already being disrupted…

Doug McMillon, the CEO of Walmart who has developed a cordial relationship with Trump through meetings at Mar-a-Lago and several mutual friends, bluntly told Trump that the trade war with China had already started to disrupt the supply chain, officials said, and would only intensify by summer.

We should have never become so dependent on imports from China. I have been ranting about this for years. Now we find ourselves in a situation where our economy literally cannot function properly without Chinese-made goods.

According to Zero Hedge, scheduled import volumes at the Port of Los Angeles are beginning to plummet dramatically…

The Trump administration is likely monitoring sliding scheduled import volumes at the Port of Los Angeles—the largest container port in the Western Hemisphere—amid President Trump’s overnight remarks hinting at a potential de-escalation in the trade war with China.

The president’s comments to ease trade tensions with Beijing come as scheduled import volumes at the LA Port indicate possible inbound trade disruptions on the horizon.

According to Port Optimizer, a tracking system for vessel operators, scheduled import volumes for the LA Port for the week ending May 3 show a 38.53% week-over-week plunge.

Year-over-year, the data shows a 9.79% decrease. For the week ending May 10, scheduled import volumes continued to slow, with a year-over-year change down around 35%.

Those numbers might not mean anything to you now. But you will be quite upset when you go to a big box store and the item that you are looking for is not there.

The reality of the matter is that our supply chains have already been thrown into a state of chaos. One industry insider warned CNBC that more than 700,000 truckloads “have evaporated nationally” in just the last week…

The fallout from the ocean freight slowdown is beginning to hit ground transport linked to ports.

“We are at a tipping point on the West Coast,” said Ken Adamo, chief of analytics at DAT Freight & Analytics. “Looking at how many truckloads are available versus trucks, we’ve seen a precipitous drop; over 700,000 loads have evaporated nationally in the past week compared to two weeks prior,” he said.

That is cataclysmic. In all my years, I have never seen anything even close to this.

And the outlook for the weeks ahead is even more troubling. We are being told that “ocean container bookings from China to the United States are down over 60%”… READ MORE