Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump may not agree on much, but they have found common ground on who to blame for the port strike threatening to cripple the economy — foreign-owned shipping firms.
“This strike is about fairness,” Harris said Tuesday. “Foreign-owned shipping companies have made record profits and executive compensation has grown. The Longshoremen, who play a vital role transporting essential goods across America, deserve a fair share of these record profits.”
Not to be outdone, Trump released his own statement, saying, “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.”
ONE is based in Singapore, and the other big shippers, Maersk, CMA CGM, Evergreen, Hapag-Lloyd, and COSCO, are based offshore. COSCO has come in for particular scorn, as it is a state-owned Chinese enterprise, playing into bipartisan concerns about that country’s controversial economic practices.
The East Coast work stoppage comes as Harris and Trump are battling for blue-collar voters, exactly the kinds of people the International Longshoremen’s Association represents. President Joe Biden, who often calls himself the most pro-union president in American history, is so far refusing to invoke the Taft-Hartley Act, which could end the strike against the ILA’s wishes.
Biden has also pointed to foreign ownership of shipping firms.
“The president … directed his team to keep urging foreign-owned ocean carriers represented by [the U.S. Maritime Alliance] to present a strong and fair offer to the ILA,” the White House said Tuesday. “These foreign companies have seen record profits — up as much as 800% since the pandemic, when Longshoremen put themselves at risk to keep ports open — and the president believes it is time they present an offer that reflects ILA workers’ invaluable contribution to their success.”
The White House mentioned offshore ownership a third time by saying Biden had directed his team to monitor for “any price gouging activity that benefits foreign ocean carriers.”
Striking workers have brought up the issue as well, warning that automation of their jobs will not only put them out of work but will lead to even more profits heading overseas.
But Scott Lincicome, a trade policy expert at the CATO Institute, said domestic policy is largely to blame for the offshoring trend.
“It’s not an issue at all,” he said. “It’s a total distraction.”
He points toward legislation like the Jones Act, which insulates American shipping firms from domestic competition but, he says, makes them uncompetitive internationally. He says it costs four to five times as much to build a ship in the United States as it does overseas, arguing that is the reason all of the big firms have moved to Europe and Asia since the 1980s.
Unions have pushed for a tariff on Chinese-made ships that would be used to subsidize shipbuilding in the U.S., but Lincicome argues that deregulation would go a lot further toward revitalizing the domestic industry.
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Whether that solution works politically remains to be seen.
As news of the strike spreads, some consumers have resorted to panic-buying items like toilet paper that aren’t affected by the work stoppage. If store shelves start emptying out, voters may start demanding action from politicians that go beyond statements about foreign ownership.