Crypto News: Supply Lines: Wages for dockworkers

The CEO of Maersk has cautioned that an East and Gulf coast dockworker strike would cause disruptions beyond the US. His counterpart at Hapag-Lloyd has said there's "simply not enough slack in that system" to absorb such a supply shock.

To prevent that from happening, the opposing sides need to talk, and that's what's scheduled to get underway on Wednesday in New Jersey between the longshoremen's union and USMX, the alliance of carriers and port terminal operators.

The deadline to avoid a work stoppage is Sept. 30. At stake economically is the smooth functioning of about three dozen facilities — including six of the US's 10 busiest gateways for international trade — just as importers are trying to manage inventories ahead of the holiday season.

Politically, picket lines on the docks could become a sticky situation, too. Both candidates are trying to appeal to the union vote and support higher real wages for workers.

The port employers are operating in a market with solid demand and profits are looking healthy again. The ILA dockworkers are looking for wages increase close to 80% over six years, according to reporting from Bloomberg's Laura Curtis, and the threat of automated equipment is an ongoing sticking point.

Read the full story here.

—Brendan Murray in London

Click here for more of Bloomberg.com's most-read stories about trade, supply chains and shipping.

Rail funding | The Development Bank of Southern Africa has approved as much as $200 million for the US-backed Lobito corridor rail project that will haul critical minerals from central Africa's copper belt to an Atlantic port in Angola. The lender is providing the financing alongside the US International Development Finance Corp., which has approved $553 million for the project. Meanwhile, China signed an agreement Wednesday to revamp a railway that will help landlocked Zambia, Africa's second-largest copper producer, export the metal through Tanzania.

The Biden-Harris administration's big bet on Intel to lead a US chipmaking renaissance is in grave trouble. Meanwhile, semiconductor sales in the Americas outpaced those in China for the first time in at least five years.
Goldman Sachs economists cautioned that the US economy faces a hit if Donald Trump wins the November election and imposes tariffs and immigration restrictions.
China's top electric-vehicle maker BYD won't announce a major plant investment in Mexico until at least after the US election. Meanwhile, Chery Automobile's Omoda outsold Tesla, Jeep and Fiat in Spain last month, a promising sign for the Chinese automaker's ambitious push into Europe.
Cathay Pacific Airways may not be able to put all of its Airbus SE A350 aircraft back into service as quickly as hoped due a parts shortage.
Michael Froman, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and former US Trade Representative under President Barack Obama, discusses American foreign policy after the US presidential election on this week's Voternomics podcast.
In this episode of the Talking Transports podcast, Brian Fyda, vice president of Fyda Freightliner, shares his insights into how truck dealers are navigating the challenges of higher costs and emissions rules.

India's steel minister will approach the country's Finance Ministry about raising import tariffs on the metal.
Asya Energy, which was sanctioned by the US last month for being part of Russia's suspected LNG shadow fleet, is heading to the Saam floating storage unit in a bay in the Murmansk region in Russia, according to ship-tracking data.
Run SPLC after an equity ticker on Bloomberg to show critical data about a company's suppliers, customers and peers.
Use the AHOY function to track global commodities trade flows.
See DSET CHOKE for a dataset to monitor shipping chokepoints.
For freight dashboards, see {BI RAIL}, {BI TRCK} and {BI SHIP} and {BI 3PLS}
Click HERE for automated stories about supply chains.
On the Bloomberg Terminal, type NH FWV for FreightWaves content.
See BNEF for BloombergNEF's analysis of clean energy, advanced transport, digital industry, innovative materials, and commodities.

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