UCLA Luskin Urban Planning Professor Chris Tilly spoke to Newsweek for an article about the effect that the Trump tariffs are having on California’s economy. California, known as the engine of the nation’s economy — with busy major ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach — is already seeing the consequences of the latest tariffs on imports, according to experts who also see inflation and recession fears growing amid destabilized markets. California, the fifth-largest economy in the world and the largest state economy in the U.S., is the largest importer and second-largest exporter in the nation. The tariffs also have impacted employment throughout the state, including California warehouses which have experienced large job losses, Tilly said. “California warehousing employment has not trended upward since 2022, and has fluctuated since that time, in my view because it was flirting with overcapacity,” Tilly said, adding, “Though the job losses look large, they are well within the range of recent fluctuations.”