When he voted for President Donald Trump several months ago, Craig Fuller thought he was supporting pro-business policies and small, targeted, incremental tariffs that would encourage strategic industries to bring production back to the United States.
That’s what voters got during Trump’s first term, he said.
“I did not vote for a neutron bomb to wipe out supply chains and small businesses 100 days in,” Fuller, the founder of Chattanooga-based analytics company FreightWaves, wrote on social media April 20.
Trump’s aggressive, erratic trade penalties on a litany of goods, including from Mexico, Canada and China, have stirred some wariness among American businesses, causing a slight slowdown in domestic freight, Fuller said in a phone call. Tariffs on Chinese goods now stand at 145%, which Fuller said is effectively an embargo.
(READ MORE: Trump keeps contradicting himself on tariffs, making a fragile world economy nervous)