American Companies Are Stocking Up to Get Ahead of Trump’s China Tariffs
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    HOUSE MEDIAN ASKING PRICES AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney $1,736,779 (+1.11%)       Melbourne $1,057,340 (+0.67%)       Brisbane $1,151,226 (+0.91%)       Adelaide $1,015,559 (-0.31%)       Perth $1,005,131 (+1.51%)       Hobart $796,466 (+0.04%)       Darwin $882,186 (+3.28%)       Canberra $964,108 (-3.09%)       National $1,143,418 (+0.66%)                UNIT MEDIAN ASKING PRICES AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney $795,054 (-0.05%)       Melbourne $519,602 (-0.44%)       Brisbane $725,709 (+0.28%)       Adelaide $576,859 (+0.27%)       Perth $556,364 (-0.30%)       Hobart $539,090 (+1.17%)       Darwin $431,601 (-3.46%)       Canberra $496,653 (+1.87%)       National $602,168 (+0.09%)                HOUSES FOR SALE AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney 12,039 (+174)       Melbourne 12,993 (-35)       Brisbane 7,289 (-39)       Adelaide 2,335 (-40)       Perth 5,251 (-17)       Hobart 827 (+11)       Darwin 144 (+1)       Canberra 937 (+12)       National 41,815 (+67)                UNITS FOR SALE AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney 9,101 (+9)       Melbourne 6,848 (-50)       Brisbane 1,320 (-17)       Adelaide 358 (+2)       Perth 1,221 (-32)       Hobart 171 (+4)       Darwin 244 (+4)       Canberra 1,120 (+13)       National 20,383 (-67)                HOUSE MEDIAN ASKING RENTS AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney $800 ($0)       Melbourne $580 ($0)       Brisbane $670 ($0)       Adelaide $630 (-$10)       Perth $700 ($0)       Hobart $600 (+$8)       Darwin $750 ($0)       Canberra $690 (-$10)       National $685 (-$2)                UNIT MEDIAN ASKING RENTS AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney $750 (-$10)       Melbourne $599 (-$1)       Brisbane $650 ($0)       Adelaide $535 (+$8)       Perth $650 (-$25)       Hobart $460 (-$5)       Darwin $595 (-$5)       Canberra $570 ($0)       National $612 (-$6)                HOUSES FOR RENT AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney 5,374 (-74)       Melbourne 7,632 (-176)       Brisbane 3,997 (+12)       Adelaide 1,498 (-8)       Perth 2,385 (-46)       Hobart 156 (-18)       Darwin 100 (+7)       Canberra 417 (-34)       National 21,559 (-337)                UNITS FOR RENT AND WEEKLY CHANGE     Sydney 7,991 (-97)       Melbourne 5,949 (-41)       Brisbane 1,977 (-78)       Adelaide 411 (-13)       Perth 729 (-25)       Hobart 70 (-7)       Darwin 149 (+12)       Canberra 680 (-44)       National 17,956 (-293)                HOUSE ANNUAL GROSS YIELDS AND TREND         Sydney 2.40% (↓)       Melbourne 2.85% (↓)       Brisbane 3.03% (↓)       Adelaide 3.23% (↓)       Perth 3.62% (↓)     Hobart 3.92% (↑)        Darwin 4.42% (↓)     Canberra 3.72% (↑)        National 3.11% (↓)            UNIT ANNUAL GROSS YIELDS AND TREND         Sydney 4.91% (↓)     Melbourne 5.99% (↑)        Brisbane 4.66% (↓)     Adelaide 4.82% (↑)        Perth 6.08% (↓)       Hobart 4.44% (↓)     Darwin 7.17% (↑)        Canberra 5.97% (↓)       National 5.28% (↓)            HOUSE RENTAL VACANCY RATES AND TREND       Sydney 2.0% (↑)      Melbourne 1.9% (↑)      Brisbane 1.4% (↑)      Adelaide 1.3% (↑)      Perth 1.2% (↑)      Hobart 1.0% (↑)      Darwin 1.6% (↑)      Canberra 2.7% (↑)      National 1.7% (↑)             UNIT RENTAL VACANCY RATES AND TREND       Sydney 2.4% (↑)      Melbourne 3.8% (↑)      Brisbane 2.0% (↑)      Adelaide 1.1% (↑)      Perth 0.9% (↑)      Hobart 1.4% (↑)      Darwin 2.8% (↑)      Canberra 2.9% (↑)      National 2.2% (↑)             AVERAGE DAYS TO SELL HOUSES AND TREND       Sydney 26.8 (↑)        Melbourne 27.0 (↓)       Brisbane 29.6 (↓)       Adelaide 24.7 (↓)       Perth 34.3 (↓)       Hobart 27.7 (↓)       Darwin 25.7 (↓)       Canberra 26.9 (↓)       National 27.8 (↓)            AVERAGE DAYS TO SELL UNITS AND TREND         Sydney 27.1 (↓)       Melbourne 27.4 (↓)       Brisbane 29.3 (↓)       Adelaide 26.8 (↓)       Perth 34.5 (↓)       Hobart 26.7 (↓)     Darwin 31.3 (↑)      Canberra 39.7 (↑)        National 30.4 (↓)           
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American Companies Are Stocking Up to Get Ahead of Trump’s China Tariffs

Businesses plan to stockpile, raise prices and accelerate shift to manufacturing elsewhere

By HANNAH MIAO
Thu, Nov 21, 2024 9:15amGrey Clock 5 min

By 9 p.m. on election night, it had become clear to Jason Junod that Donald Trump was returning to the White House. That night, he contacted his skin-care company’s suppliers in China to order a year’s worth of inventory for about $50,000—as much as he could afford to buy and had room to store.

His hope is that the roughly 30,000 body brushes and exfoliating gloves make it to Bare Botanics’ facility in Madison, Wis., before Inauguration Day. He thinks Trump is serious about his campaign promise to impose tariffs of 60% on all Chinese goods.

American businesses are dusting off a playbook they used during Trump’s first term: stocking up on imported goods before tariffs are enacted. They are also considering how to cope with the levies if and when enacted—whether they will be able to raise prices and whether they will need to find alternatives to their Chinese manufacturers.

“The biggest consideration is, do we stay in China?” Junod said.

When Trump began his trade war against China in 2018, U.S. businesses scrambled to front-load imports before tariffs were implemented, according to an International Monetary Fund analysis. As a result, the U.S.’s trade deficit with China—how much imports exceed exports—rose in 2018 before falling in 2019.

Bare Botanics’ body brushes are manufactured in China. Photo: Jamie Kelter Davis for WSJ

Already, exports from China surged last month, which some economists think could have been driven at least in part by front-loading amid uncertainty around election results. Outbound shipments from China rose nearly 13% in October from a year earlier, well above consensus expectations and up sharply from 2.4% growth in September.

Chinese exports growth should remain strong through the next few months because of front-loading, Wall Street economists said.

China remains the world’s top exporter of goods and the U.S. its top buyer. American companies bought roughly $430 billion of Chinese goods last year, with computer and electronic products making up the biggest chunk.

Wan Junhui, who works in marketing for an electronics manufacturer in Guangdong province, said his company has observed an increase in inquiries and “noticeable unease” from its U.S. clients recently. He said that tariffs so far haven’t affected sales significantly, but that buyers end up absorbing the levies and sometimes raising prices for their end customers.

“We’ll do our best to focus on reducing costs to help ease the situation and make it through this harsh winter,” he said.

Though China’s share of U.S. imports has declined to roughly 14% in 2023, from 22% in 2017, rising tariffs between the U.S. and China have done little to curb the overall U.S. trade deficit in global trade or China’s overall trade surplus.

The persistent trade imbalance is driven by strong demand from American consumers and weakening domestic demand in China, according to the IMF. U.S. firms have boosted their share of imports from places such as Vietnam, while China has increased exports to regions including Southeast Asia.

Tariffs aren’t paid by exporters, but rather by businesses that import products. Economists say those businesses usually pass on the bulk of the cost to consumers by raising prices.

Some economists doubt the U.S. will succeed in raising tariffs to 60% across the board on Chinese products. Economists at Goldman Sachs predict additional duties on China could average out to a 20 percentage-point increase in the effective tariff rate.

In addition to duties on Chinese goods, Trump proposed tariffs of 10% to 20% on imports from all countries.

That would be the worst-case scenario for Leah Dark-Fleury, co-founder of Stone Fleury, a natural-stone and porcelain wholesaler in San Francisco. She has been buying natural stone from the same supplier in China for two decades and imports most of her other materials from Europe.

When Trump imposed a tariff on Chinese natural stone during his first term, Dark-Fleury continued buying from China as usual. The company raised prices to compensate, but tried to not charge the full increase to stay competitive.

This week, she asked her supplier in China about the possibility of ordering about two shipping containers’ worth of natural stone under a payment plan to try to get ahead of tariffs. That could cost up to around $100,000 and last her between a few months and a year, depending on customer demand. In the longer run, she expects to raise prices on materials from China and shift some sourcing to Vietnam.

“I wish that I could buy enough to get us through the four years,” she said.

Toni Norton , owner of Fine Fit Sisters in Charlotte, N.C., sources body oil from China that is popular with customers in the summertime. She normally wouldn’t be stocking up until the new year, but is trying to order about 20,000 units before the end of the year.

If tariffs on Chinese products indeed reach 60%, Norton said she might have to stop selling body oil and focus more on her fitness-coaching services. She said she doesn’t think she has much room to raise prices on the body oil, which she mostly advertises on TikTok and sells for about $13, because “people like cheap things.”

Front-loading imports “is a short-term solution,” said Chris Tang , a professor of supply-chain management at the University of California, Los Angeles. Businesses are likely to need additional strategies in a world with persistently higher and broader tariffs.

Companies have already been moving manufacturing from China to places such as Southeast Asia and Latin America, a trend that is expected to continue—if buyers are able to find a suitable alternative to Chinese production.

A 2024 survey by Bain & Company found that 69% of chief executives and chief operating officers plan to reduce their company’s dependence on China, up from 55% in 2022.

Ryan Bursky , CEO of Lucidity Lights, a maker of lighting products in Boston, said the expectation of new tariffs is only accelerating a process under way at his company. Lucidity Lights made a strategic decision last year to begin sourcing outside of China, where it had previously done all of its production, in part because of the first phase of the trade war.

The company is on track to do about 15% of production in Cambodia this year, with plans to move about half of production out of China next year. He believes it is a better use of resources to invest in supply-chain diversification, rather than stockpiling.

Bursky said it has taken some time to find the right suppliers in Cambodia, which is still growing its manufacturing capacity and speed. But he thinks that the products made in Cambodia are better quality and that there is more attention to detail.

Joe Jurken , the founder and managing director of the ABC Group in Milwaukee, which helps U.S. businesses manage supply chains in Asia, expects China to still dominate manufacturing somewhat, even as his clients have beefed up sourcing from countries such as Vietnam, India and Cambodia.

China has developed infrastructure, communication and transaction channels that make doing business easy for Western companies, while those systems are still being developed in other countries, he said. Plus, it is hard for manufacturers in other countries to beat Chinese suppliers’ low prices.

“China will never be replaced,” Jurken said. “Other markets are an alternative.”

Junod, who started his skin-care business in 2020, has considered looking for manufacturers in Southeast Asia, but believes it would be difficult to replicate the low cost and high quality he has come to rely on from his Chinese suppliers.

“It feels like we’re being punished because there isn’t really anywhere else for us to turn domestically,” he said of Trump’s proposed tariffs. “We have no choice, really, but to pay them.”



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In a Sea of Tech Talent, Companies Can’t Find the Workers They Want

A divide has opened in the tech job market between those with artificial-intelligence skills and everyone else.

By CALLUM BORCHERS
Thu, Oct 2, 2025 4 min

There has rarely, if ever, been so much tech talent available in the job market. Yet many tech companies say good help is hard to find.

What gives?

U.S. colleges more than doubled the number of computer-science degrees awarded from 2013 to 2022, according to federal data. Then came round after round of layoffs at Google, Meta, Amazon, and others.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts businesses will employ 6% fewer computer programmers in 2034 than they did last year.

All of this should, in theory, mean there is an ample supply of eager, capable engineers ready for hire.

But in their feverish pursuit of artificial-intelligence supremacy, employers say there aren’t enough people with the most in-demand skills. The few perceived as AI savants can command multimillion-dollar pay packages. On a second tier of AI savvy, workers can rake in close to $1 million a year .

Landing a job is tough for most everyone else.

Frustrated job seekers contend businesses could expand the AI talent pipeline with a little imagination. The argument is companies should accept that relatively few people have AI-specific experience because the technology is so new. They ought to focus on identifying candidates with transferable skills and let those people learn on the job.

Often, though, companies seem to hold out for dream candidates with deep backgrounds in machine learning. Many AI-related roles go unfilled for weeks or months—or get taken off job boards only to be reposted soon after.

Playing a different game

It is difficult to define what makes an AI all-star, but I’m sorry to report that it’s probably not whatever you’re doing.

Maybe you’re learning how to work more efficiently with the aid of ChatGPT and its robotic brethren. Perhaps you’re taking one of those innumerable AI certificate courses.

You might as well be playing pickup basketball at your local YMCA in hopes of being signed by the Los Angeles Lakers. The AI minds that companies truly covet are almost as rare as professional athletes.

“We’re talking about hundreds of people in the world, at the most,” says Cristóbal Valenzuela, chief executive of Runway, which makes AI image and video tools.

He describes it like this: Picture an AI model as a machine with 1,000 dials. The goal is to train the machine to detect patterns and predict outcomes. To do this, you have to feed it reams of data and know which dials to adjust—and by how much.

The universe of people with the right touch is confined to those with uncanny intuition, genius-level smarts or the foresight (possibly luck) to go into AI many years ago, before it was all the rage.

As a venture-backed startup with about 120 employees, Runway doesn’t necessarily vie with Silicon Valley giants for the AI job market’s version of LeBron James. But when I spoke with Valenzuela recently, his company was advertising base salaries of up to $440,000 for an engineering manager and $490,000 for a director of machine learning.

A job listing like one of these might attract 2,000 applicants in a week, Valenzuela says, and there is a decent chance he won’t pick any of them. A lot of people who claim to be AI literate merely produce “workslop”—generic, low-quality material. He spends a lot of time reading academic journals and browsing GitHub portfolios, and recruiting people whose work impresses him.

In addition to an uncommon skill set, companies trying to win in the hypercompetitive AI arena are scouting for commitment bordering on fanaticism .

Daniel Park is seeking three new members for his nine-person startup. He says he will wait a year or longer if that’s what it takes to fill roles with advertised base salaries of up to $500,000.

He’s looking for “prodigies” willing to work seven days a week. Much of the team lives together in a six-bedroom house in San Francisco.

If this sounds like a lonely existence, Park’s team members may be able to solve their own problem. His company, Pickle, aims to develop personalised AI companions akin to Tony Stark’s Jarvis in “Iron Man.”

Overlooked

James Strawn wasn’t an AI early adopter, and the father of two teenagers doesn’t want to sacrifice his personal life for a job. He is beginning to wonder whether there is still a place for people like him in the tech sector.

He was laid off over the summer after 25 years at Adobe , where he was a senior software quality-assurance engineer. Strawn, 55, started as a contractor and recalls his hiring as a leap of faith by the company.

He had been an artist and graphic designer. The managers who interviewed him figured he could use that background to help make Illustrator and other Adobe software more user-friendly.

Looking for work now, he doesn’t see the same willingness by companies to take a chance on someone whose résumé isn’t a perfect match to the job description. He’s had one interview since his layoff.

“I always thought my years of experience at a high-profile company would at least be enough to get me interviews where I could explain how I could contribute,” says Strawn, who is taking foundational AI courses. “It’s just not like that.”

The trouble for people starting out in AI—whether recent grads or job switchers like Strawn—is that companies see them as a dime a dozen.

“There’s this AI arms race, and the fact of the matter is entry-level people aren’t going to help you win it,” says Matt Massucci, CEO of the tech recruiting firm Hirewell. “There’s this concept of the 10x engineer—the one engineer who can do the work of 10. That’s what companies are really leaning into and paying for.”

He adds that companies can automate some low-level engineering tasks, which frees up more money to throw at high-end talent.

It’s a dynamic that creates a few handsomely paid haves and a lot more have-nots.

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