Early Tuesday 45,000 workers went on strike at our 36 major shipping ports from Maine to Texas, imposing estimated costs of $5 billion daily and causing a supply chain nightmare. This shuts down our enormous ports in Houston and near New York City, and is the first strike by the longshoremen’s union since 1977.
Inflation is the root cause of this devastating dockworkers’ strike, which is part of a new strike wave that includes the walkout at Boeing that has stretched into its third week and caused more than a billion dollars in harm. Inflation has sharply increased the cost of living and created uncertainty about the future value of the dollar, while wages have failed to keep up with rising costs.
Workers feel compelled to demand substantial salary increases merely to break even as the costs of daily necessities of life have soared. In negotiating long-term contracts, unions must factor in uncertainty about how bad inflation will become, which has pushed the annual increase in healthcare costs from 5% in 2021 to an estimated 8% by next year.
“Look at Inflation destroying the World. NONE OF THIS HAPPENED WHILE I WAS PRESIDENT!” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday afternoon in dismay about multiple crises occurring under Kamala Harris, who cast the tie-breaking vote in enacting the Inflation Acceleration Act in 2022, misnamed the Inflation Reduction Act.
Reading from a teleprompter, Harris declared “I will work to pass the first-ever federal ban on price gauging on food.” Her gaffe in mispronouncing “price gouging” showed she had no understanding of what she was reciting, and her plan would result in shortages.
Meanwhile, Trump has been visiting the carnage wrought by Hurricane Helene in Georgia and North Carolina, where more than 140 have died from the storm and a reported 600 are missing. Biden was lounging at his vacation home refusing to do anything more than take a few phone calls, while Harris dined with liberal celebrities in Hollywood who hope to buy this election with lavish campaign contributions.
“Oh, it’s good to be home!” gushed Kamala Harris Sunday afternoon to liberal billionaires in Los Angeles, while 1.7 million businesses and residents lost power in the Southeast from Hurricane Helene. Only after Trump shamed Biden did Sleepy Joe finally agree to visit the devastated regions.
A rebuilding effort will be needed in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene but that won’t be easy with all of our Eastern ports shut down by the recent strike. It won’t be cheap, either, with construction prices having risen sharply during the Biden Administration, and strikes causing more inflation.
Already surcharges have been slapped onto goods in anticipation of the closing of our Eastern and Southern shipping ports, and goods have been rerouted at additional expense to the West Coast. Shortages are expected.
Philadelphia, in battleground Pennsylvania that is expected to decide the upcoming presidential election, is a major port of entry being hit particularly hard by this shutdown. Produce is what comes through the Port of Philadelphia: vegetables and fruit, plus frozen meat, paper, and steel products.
Americans have already endured sticker shock on these goods, as Trump explained in detail during a press conference on August 15 at his summer home in Bedminster, New Jersey. Food prices have surged by 28% since 2019, with nearly all of those increases due to inflation under Kamala Harris and Biden.
Trump has gotten along well with unions his entire life while constructing high-rises in New York City, Chicago, and beyond. With union labor he built his magnificent hotel at 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., completed it ahead of schedule, and subsequently sold it at a profit.
Trump is supported by an overwhelming majority of Teamsters union workers as confirmed by a recent poll that its leaders published in September. The Teamsters bosses declined for the first time in nearly 30 years to endorse the Democrat nominee, Kamala Harris.
The strike wave of 1945-1946 resulted in the Republican landslide of historic proportions in the midterm elections that year. Then the Taft-Hartley Act was enacted to deal with costly strikes by authorizing the president to order a cooling-off period for negotiations, but Biden refuses to invoke it now in fear of a backlash by union voters.
A similar strike wave occurred in the 1970s, and contributed to runaway inflation that culminated in Jimmy Carter’s landslide defeat for reelection in 1980. The incumbent president in 1976, Gerald Ford, was likewise defeated when he ran for reelection.
As roughly half of our nation’s ocean shipping grinds to a halt now, the lack of leadership in the White House harms our Nation. As war continues in Ukraine and expands in the Middle East, this strike wave at home weakens our national strength.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.