A Looming East Coast Port Strike Could Shake the Economy

Businesses are preparing for a strike by dockworkers on the East and Gulf Coasts, which could begin Oct. 1 if negotiations don’t yield a new contract.

With dockworkers on the East and Gulf Coasts threatening to strike on Oct. 1, businesses have been accelerating imports, redirecting cargo and pleading with the Biden administration to prevent a walkout.

Some importers started ordering Christmas goods four months earlier than usual to get them through the ports before a labor contract between the operators of port terminals and the International Longshoremen’s Association expires next Monday.

Many shipments have been diverted to West Coast ports, where dockworkers belong to a different union that agreed a new contract last year. The ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles say they are handling at least as many containers as they did during the pandemic shipping boom of 2021-22.

Despite those measures — and all the problem-solving skills that supply chain managers developed during the turbulence of recent years — a short strike could lead to significant disruptions. JPMorgan transportation analysts estimate that a strike could cost the economy $5 billion a day, or about 6 percent of gross domestic product, expressed daily. For each day the ports are shut down, the analysts said, it would take roughly six days to clear the backlog.

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