Ry Rivard
Wed, October 2, 2024
Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are so far taking the same side in the strike by East and Gulf Coast longshoremen — speaking up for the American workers against the foreign-owned shipping companies that control ports in the U.S.
The fact that major political leaders from both parties are taking aim at the European- and Asian-based shipping companies represents an early political victory for the dockworkers. Their union has portrayed the strike that began this week as a necessary step to get better wages from exploitative conglomerates that bring goods in and out of the country.
The messaging is also just the latest sign that both parties see the support of blue-collar workers as crucial to the outcome of November's elections.
“American workers should be able to negotiate for better wages, especially since the shipping companies are mostly foreign flag vessels, including the largest consortium ONE,” Trump said in a statement on Tuesday evening. The Singapore-based ONE is the sixth-largest shipping company in the world.
Striking dockworkers are enjoying the confluence of a labor-friendly Democratic White House and a GOP nominee trying to court union voters weeks before an election. Trump’s support for this strike contrasts with his suggestion in August, during an interview on X with Elon Musk, that striking employees should be fired.
Harris also sounded a message sympathetic to the port workers on Wednesday, despite the risk that an extended strike could trigger price spikes and commodity shortages that would imperil her chances of defeating Trump.
The vice president said the strike by the International Longshoremen’s Association is “about fairness,” and also emphasized the shippers’ outside-the-U.S. locale.
“Foreign-owned shipping companies have made record profits and executive compensation has grown,” she said in a statement. “The Longshoremen, who play a vital role transporting essential goods across America, deserve a fair share of these record profits.”
Harris also dismissed Trump’s pro-union rhetoric as an “empty promise.”
President Joe Biden has similarly criticized shipping companies for not sharing enough of their recent record profits with workers, and said his administration is monitoring “any price gouging activity that benefits foreign ocean carriers” during the strike.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat whose state is home to the largest port on the East Coast, put the issue more starkly. He said the strike is “foreign owned operators on the one hand and American workers on the other hand.”
The United States Maritime Alliance, the trade group that represents the shipping industry at the bargaining table, pushed back against the criticism, saying its diverse membership includes foreign-owned companies that have American subsidiaries, as well as port facility operators and associations that are based in the U.S.
“Our members employ more than 35,000 Americans within their direct organizations, and play a vital role in supporting economic activity across the country,” the alliance, known as USMX, said in a statement.
The foreign companies are convenient political foils for all sides, including the union, which is demanding raises of 60 percent or more over the next six years for workers who already do well by blue-collar standards. (Dockworkers in New York and New Jersey can make over $250,000 a year.)
Shortages during the pandemic put supply-chain issues on America's radar screen. Both parties have sought to boost American self-reliance and manufacturing, with Trump and Biden notably both agreeing that the U.S. needs to cut its reliance on Chinese goods.
But the shipping industry is a vital link to world markets that remains in the hands of foreign companies. Since the 1980s, almost all American ocean carriers have been sold to foreign companies or gone out of business. As a result, the U.S., which has its roots as a collection of maritime colonies centuries ago, has lost its place as a maritime leader over the past several decades.
Some of the companies that operate these ships, known as ocean carriers, may carry familiar logos on the sides of shipping containers. Many — like Maersk, CMA CGM, Evergreen and Hapag-Lloyd — are based in countries friendly to the U.S., but some are not. COSCO is a state-owned Chinese enterprise, which makes it an even bigger target given the anti-China sentiment coursing through Congress in both parties.
Rep. Mike Waltz, a Florida Republican, singled out COSCO in a social media post about the strike and warned of Chinese influence over American ports.
Of the more than 40,000 cargo ships in the world, fewer than 200 are based in the U.S. The business is also heavily concentrated because the largest companies — all foreign owned — control the lion’s share of the market.
Even Sea-Land, an American company that is credited for inventing the now-ubiquitous cargo container 70 years ago, was sold to Denmark-based Maersk in 1999.
The head of the striking dockworkers union, ILA President Harold Daggett, used to work for Sea-Land and speaks fondly of the company, while blasting Maersk for making record profits, doling out executive bonuses and attempting to replace his members with robots.
“If it was up to them, they would like to see everybody lose their jobs,” Daggett said in a recent video statement.
While all the major shipping lines are foreign-owned, other companies operate port facilities, known as terminals. Some of those are purely American companies, including Port Newark Container Terminal, which is based in New Jersey, and Red Hook Terminals, which has facilities in New York, New Jersey and Texas.
But Maersk also owns one of the largest terminal operators, APM Terminals, which Daggett has been particularly critical of because his members work at terminals. In Rotterdam, the Netherlands, Maersk has already built a “fully automated” terminal. As part of the contract negotiations, Daggett wants to protect workers from such automation.
At times, the foreign ownership issues have drawn legal and lawmakers’ scrutiny.
In 2016, Tyson Foods, the American food giant, urged the federal government to take a closer look at alliances among the shipping companies.
In 2017, The Wall Street Journal reported that federal investigators “crashed a meeting of the world’s 20 biggest container-shipping operators and gave subpoenas to top executives at several companies as part of a probe on price fixing.” The investigation was closed without charges.
Not only does the U.S. have few cargo ships, but the country cannot easily build more ships even if it wanted to.
This issue has long worried Congress because the American shipbuilding industry is, in the words of the Congressional Research Service, “globally uncompetitive.”
New attention on foreign ownership amid the strike could put pressure on the Biden administration to take action against Chinese cargo ships as part of a probeinto Beijing’s state-backed shipbuilding industry, which has enabled the country’s industry to quickly dominate the shipbuilding and maritime sector. The probe was requested by a coalition of labor unions, which proposed a port fee on Chinese-made ships that could be used to fund a subsidy to revitalize U.S. shipbuilding.
Ari Hawkins, Nick Niedzwiadek, Holly Otterbein, Josh Sisco and Sam Sutton contributed to this report.
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