Seroka noted that the communities' ability to recover from the January wildfires is particularly reliant on imported goods. “We need lumber from Canada, appliances from Mexico; aluminum, steel, copper and furniture from China,” he said, calling the tariffs “the highest tax we’ve ever seen.”

“Certainly, if we have reduced container volume and more specifically imports, be it from China or Southeast Asia, it would have an impact on jobs,” Mario Cordero, CEO of the Port of Long Beach, told CBS News.

Cordero said job security at the ports will depend on how the tariffs play out over the next six months. “There’s no need to react right now in terms of imagining worst scenarios,” he said.

Any slowdown at the L.A. ports will ripple deeply through the Southern California economy. According to a report from the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., the transportation, trade and utilities sector is one of the area's largest employment clusters, with an estimated 830,000 workers last year.

A major part of the region’s economy is based on importing goods from Southeast Asia. Chinese goods account for 39% of the imports at the Port of L.A. and 62% of the imports at the Port of Long Beach; between the two ports, a total of 186,000 people work in international trade, according to CBS News.

“The single most important part of the economy, in terms of employment (and) economic activity, in the L.A. area is logistics, basically the imports, exports, shipment of goods,” Kevin Klowden, an economist with the Milken Institute in Santa Monica, told the Times.

“There will be fewer employment opportunities at the ports and throughout the supply chain that goes from the ports well into the Inland Empire, where huge numbers of containers are processed every day,” said Jock O’Connell, an international trade advisor at L.A.’s Beacon Economics.

Logistics employs 265,000 people in the two-county Inland Empire, according to CBS data.

The manufacturing sector in Los Angeles, which employed an estimated 313,000 workers last year, has been boosted in recent months by a new generation of South Bay aerospace companies. Many of these companies rely on components manufactured in Asia that now face steeper tariffs, which will raise the cost of domestically produced goods sold in the U.S. and for exports.

“It’s going to have a huge, huge impact on manufacturing and supply chains throughout California,” Klowden said. “We don’t have the specialized manufacturing for all of these supply chains, and certainly not at cost in the U.S.”

Companies that decoupled their supply chains from China and are now sourcing components from other Southeast Asia nations will not be spared the impact of the new tariffs, which are also targeting Japan, South Korea, India and Vietnam. China has announced that it will reciprocate by imposing a 34% tariff on U.S. goods.

Cupertino-based tech giant Apple has decided it will send more iPhones to the U.S. market from India, to avoid the cumulative 54% increase on the tariff for the technology made in China. Instead, Apple will be hit with a 26% tariff now imposed on by the Trump Administration on products made in India, The Wall Street Journal reported.

California exports will be ripe targets for reciprocation if the trade war escalates. Last year, the Golden State exported $160B in manufactured goods, including nearly $50B in computer and electronics products, $19B in machinery and $16B in chemicals.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has announced he is directing the state to pursue its own trade relationships outside the federal government, asking trading partners to exempt California goods from any retaliatory tariffs. With a GDP of nearly $4T, California is the largest importer and second-largest exporter among states.

Newsom said the new U.S. tariffs will cause major disruption to the existing cross-border supply chain in the California-Baja mega-region, a fully integrated North American manufacturing hub that sends parts and goods back and forth across the border.

“If these goods are taxed each time they cross the border, the price of the final product will rise and ultimately be passed on to California consumers. This will have far-reaching impacts, affecting everything from semiconductors to aerospace and automotive products,” Newsom said in a statement.