5 things the Virginia committee investigating impact of federal cuts didn’t hear (but maybe should have)

When the House of Delegates “emergency committee” on federal government cuts met in Wytheville earlier this week, legislators didn’t hear a lot of specifics.

Impacts on international tourism? Too soon to tell, said Virginia tourism chief Rita McClenny.

Impacts on agriculture? Too soon to tell, said Jason Grant of the Center for Agricultural Trade at Virginia Tech.

Impacts of tariffs on economic development? Too soon to tell, said Virginia economic development chief Jason El-Koubi.

Democrats left the meeting sounding frustrated by the lack of details; Republicans seemed optimistic because there wasn’t a long list of traumatic impacts from President Donald Trump’s downsizing of the federal government (and imposition of tariffs). See the story by Cardinal’s Elizabeth Beyer for more.

As a journalist who has kept an eye open for impacts from the changes Trump has set in motion, I, too, was frustrated. I’ve read everything from dire warnings of doom to sunny predictions of a new golden age that will dawn. It would be nice to have some actual facts instead. 

The reality is that it might, indeed, be too soon to tell what the impact of the Trump administration will be, even in terms of government cutbacks and tariffs and, to employ the popular phrase, “the vibes.” McClenny pointed out that while international bookings are down, the real key is how many people actually show up and most of those don’t come through bookings so we may need to wait for the summer vacation season to get an accurate picture. 

In that spirit of trying to rely on facts and not forecasts,  I’ve tried to assemble some facts that are available and that the committee didn’t hear. You’ll notice that only one of these deals with federal workforce reductions; the rest appear connected to tariffs and other factors that all are helping re-shape the Virginia economy. It would appear that, for now, tariffs are having more of an impact than the federal cuts. But let’s look at what we know for sure:

1. Shipping volumes through Hampton Roads are down

Shipping is measured in TEUs – which stands for twenty-foot equivalents, 20 feet being the standard length of a shipping container. In April, the number of imports through Hampton Roads were down -7.6%, the number of exports down -9.3%. For the year, imports are down -6.2% while exports are down -9.0%. When Trump was asked recently about slowdowns at American ports, he said: “”That means we lose less money. When you say it slowed down, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing.” 

For someone concerned about a trade deficit, a decline in imports might make sense but a decline in the number of exports – a greater decline – is undeniably a bad thing. That’s fewer American-made products being sold to the world, which at some point likely means fewer American workers to make them.

We’ve heard a lot about the number of container ships at the West Coast ports dropping dramatically, raising the specter of shortages of whatever products aren’t being imported. Those West Coast ports mostly service ships to and from Asia, principally China. China accounts for 62% of the traffic at Long Beach, California. By contrast, the port at Hampton Roads gets less traffic from China than any of the major U.S. ports, just 19%, according to the Port Authority of Virginia. The biggest source of traffic for Hampton Roads is “other” at 37%, followed by the European Union at 26%, India at 10% and Vietnam at 8%. The takeaways: Hampton Roads is more insulated from trade with China than other ports. Nonetheless, traffic is down, and the more worrisome part of that is that exports are down.

CNBC recently computed export traffic (and just export traffic) at the nation’s ports from February through May and found that Hampton Roads was down -12.3%. 

2. China has shifted coal purchases from the United States to Canada

Virginia’s biggest export has traditionally been coal, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity and World’s Top Exports. That coal is overwhelmingly (about 79%) metallurgical coal, the kind used in steel-making as opposed to heating, according to U.S. Coal Exports.

China has now dramatically cut back its purchases of “met” coal from the United States and instead increased its coal purchases from Australia, Canada and Russia, with the most dramatic increase being with Canada, according to S&P Global.

China apparently stocked up on U.S coal early in the year, before Trump imposed tariffs so the declines from February to March aren’t the best guide. Instead, the year-to-year figures from March 2024 to March 2025 are. 

In March 2024, China bought 551,545 metric tons of met coal from the United States. In March 2025, those purchases fell to 207,703 metric tons, a year-to-year drop of -62%.  

Over that same time period, China’s purchase of met coal from Canada  jumped from 436,924 metric tons to 828,065 metric tons – an increase of 90%. 

China essentially moved purchases from the United States to Canada to the point where it now buys four times as much coal from Canada as it does from the United States. Is that why Virginia’s largest underground mine – owned by a subsidiary of Coronado Coal – laid off 140 workers recently? Coronado’s not talking, so we don’t know, but presumably something has caused business conditions to change. We can’t say definitely this is because of tariffs but they’re certainly a prime suspect.

3. China has shifted soybean purchases from the United States to Brazil

Soybeans are Virginia’s second biggest exports (although some years they’re number one and coal ranks lower). Nationally, about half of American soybean exports are to China. World Grain reports that China stopped buying soybeans from the United States just before Trump took office. It’s recently resumed purchases but the South China Morning Post reports that China is now moving to increase its soybean purchases from Brazil. Chinese-bound ships full of Brazilian soybeans were up 48% in April 2025 over April 2024, according to Chinese officials. It’s possible, of course, that if the trade war cools off that previous trade patterns will return. The danger is that they don’t.

In Virginia, the top soybean-growing counties are in the eastern part of the state, with Accomack County ranked first and Essex County second. However, soybean farming extends into Southside and the Shenandoah Valley, as well, so farmers in much of the state will want to see how the soybean market plays out.

4. Canadians have shifted tourism dollars to Mexico

While McClenny, the head of the Virginia Tourism Corporation, says it’s too early in the travel season to know how international tourism will play out, we do know some things. International travel accounted for $1.1 billion spending in Virginia in 2023, according to the VTC. Those figures have been rising since the pandemic but remain lower than the pre-pandemic high of $1.8 billion in 2018. 

Canadians are the most frequent international visitors to Virginia. In the past, they’ve accounted for about half the international visitors to the state, according to the Virginia Tourism Corporation, although their spending appears to be lower. In 2023, Canadians spent $203 million in the state, according to WHRO in Norfolk. It’s been widely reported to be shifting their tourism dollars to Mexico instead of the U.S. – Canadian trips to Mexico are up 15.6% and those to the United States are down 13.5%, according to the website Travel and Tour World. 

Fun fact: To get to the meeting place at Wytheville Community College, legislators drove past a hotel on U.S. 11 that routinely flies the Canadian flag as a way to attract Canadian tourists getting off the exit from Interstate 81. However, Travel and Tour World reports that Canadian travelers by car are down 35% in April.

Let’s do some math: If Canadian tourism spending in Virginia falls by the 13.5% that it’s fallen nationwide, that’s $27.4 million less spending in Virginia. On a percentage basis, that’s a small slice of the $33.3 billion that tourism spent in the state in 2023, the most record figures available – so this is a cup half full, cup half empty proposition. Do we focus on the small percentage decrease or do we focus on the millions of dollars not spent? That answer could depend on whether you’re connected with one of the businesses that would normally receive those dollars, or in one of the localities that benefits most from taxes collected from tourists.

5. Virginia is now losing jobs but unemployment in Northern Virginia is not unusually high and jobs there are actually growing

Employment rose nationally in both months but dropped in Virginia, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “While national employment grew by over 228,000 jobs in January and February 2025, Virginia saw a net loss of nearly 8,000 jobs over the same period, signaling a clear divergence from national trends,” the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia writes in its quarterly economic report. “Since January 2022, Virginia has recorded job losses in only three other months, making this dip significant.”

However, we don’t (yet) see unusual unemployment rates in Northern Virginia, where most federal jobs in the state are concentrated. Unemployment in Northern Virginia ticked up by 0.8% in March to 3.2%, according to state figures. That’s still below the state average of 3.4%. The highest unemployment rate is in Emporia at 8.3%, a figure that seems certain to increase with the recent closing of the Georgia-Pacific paper mill there which put 550 people out of work. It’s not yet apparent that the federal cutbacks are showing up in unemployment data. Of the state’s 11 metro areas, seven have higher unemployment rates than Northern Virginia did during March, the last month for which data is available. The highest is 4.0% in the New River Valley; New River also saw the biggest increase in March, up by 1.2%. Meanwhile, the number of people employed has actually increased in Northern Virginia, according to state figures. Through March, the employent losses in the state are primarily in Southwest Virginia, not Northern Virginia.

The Weldon Cooper Center forecasts that unemployment in the state will rise through the year and hit levels not seen since the pandemic in 2021. “Virginia is expected to shed 32,000 jobs in 2025, a 0.8% decline from the previous year,” the center says in its regular forecast. “Losses are projected to deepen in the second half of the year and extend into early 2026. Recovery is expected to begin late that year, with a net gain of approximately 17,000 jobs in 2026, or 0.4% growth.”

For some, the headline is that forecast. For those who prefer to stick to what’s happening right now, well, see above. 

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