Massive longshoreman strike affects dozens of East and Gulf Coast ports – National & International News – TUE 1Oct2024

Massive longshoreman strike affects dozens of East and Gulf Coast ports.

Vance, Walz to face off in VP debate tonight.

Iran launches nearly 200 missiles at Tel Aviv.

NATIONAL NEWS

Massive longshoreman strike affects dozens of East and Gulf Coast ports 

The international longshoreman’s association (ILA), the union representing 45,000 dockworkers at 36 ports from Maine to Texas, called a strike as of midnight last night. The ILA was unable to come to an agreement on a new 6-year contract with the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX), which represents shipping companies, before the old contract expired. ILA and USMX are still very far apart in terms of ILA’s demands for pay raises and guarantees against encroaching automation in the industry. 

ILA president Harold Daggett says that his members are willing to strike as long as it takes to reach a fair contract. Daggett is particularly hostile towards companies’ plans to introduce further automation at ports. In a recent interview, Daggett spoke of foreign investors, which have either total or controlling interest in several us ports, who are planning to build fully automated ports, which would put thousands of dockworkers out of work in the coming years. Not only would this endanger job security, it would also be a threat to the pensions of retired members. 

This strike comes in a particularly sensitive moment for the US economy and for the Biden administration in particular. The US is just coming down from a period of high inflation, with some indicators of a possible recession on the horizon. JP Morgan estimates that a strike that totally shuts down east and Gulf Coast ports could cost the US economy between $3.8 billion – $4.5 billion per day. Some of those losses will be recovered over time when normal operations resume. However, even a day’s strike will cost a week’s worth of delays at ports. The longer the strike goes on, the more undeliverable cargo will pile up in ports and on ships that will have to wait offshore to be unloaded. 

Could Biden intervene? 

If the ILA and the USMX do not come to an agreement quickly, President Biden does have the power to essentially force the two sides back to the negotiating table and draft the striking workers back to work. Presidents have been granted this power over certain key labor sectors by the Labor Management Relations Act (better known as the Taft-Hartley Act) of 1947.  

As Daggett says in the interview, this would force a 90-day cooling off period during which dock workers will return to work while the parties continue to negotiating. However, Daggett implied that his workers might engage in a slowdown if forced back to work without a contract, going from “30 [container] moves an hour maybe to eight”. 

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Vance, Walz to face off in VP debate tonight 

Republican Donald Trump’s running mate Ohio senator JD Vance will face Democrat Kamala Harris’s running mate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz in the first and probably only vice presidential candidate debate this election season. The debate will air on CBS at 9:00 p.m. ET / 8:00 p.m. CT. The debate will take place at the University of Utah. Unlike past VP debates, the two candidates will be standing rather than seated. The candidates will not be allowed written notes and there will be no audience present.

Vice presidential debates are not normally terribly consequential. However, this is not a normal election year. Just over a month ahead of the election, neither Harris nor Trump has a clear polling advantage. While Harris has a narrow lead over Trump in national polls, she is lagging behind him in some key swing states. 

Since Trump has ruled out any further debates with Harris before the election, it will be up to Vance and Walz to make the “closing arguments” for their respective tickets in a face-to-face televised venue.

Possible flashpoints will include abortion, immigration, and the economy. However, Vance and Walz are also likely to take jabs at one another’s characters, backgrounds, past statements and actions, and those of their respective running mates. 

VP vibe check 

More than policy, the real test tonight may be of the two men’s abilities to charm the audience. The winner will be the one who comes out looking better, or at least less bad and with fewer gaffes.

Vance sometimes comes off somewhat smarmy and off-putting in interviews, while Walz is quick on his feet, affable and avuncular. However, Vance may have the advantage over Walz tonight since he has taken part in more interviews – and more combative interviews – than Walz has since becoming his party’s VP pick. This experience facing a hostile interlocutor may put Vance more at ease on stage and on camera. 

Both men have been holed up for days preparing, so we will see whose preparation pays off more. Walz has reportedly been participating in mock debates with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg standing in as Vance. Vance has been doing the same with Minnesota Congressman Tom Emmer standing in for Walz. 

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INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Iran launches nearly 200 missiles at Tel Aviv 

For the second time this year, Iran launched a volley of missiles at Israel in retaliation for Israel’s recent attacks on Iran’s territory and interests. When Israel assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July this year, Iran vowed to retaliate but said it would do so at a time and in a manner of its choosing. Until now, Iran has taken no direct action against Israel since Haniyeh’s murder. Then last week, Israel launched a massive bombardment of Beirut and southern Lebanon. 

Just in the past week, Israel’s bombardment has killed over a thousand people in Lebanon and displaced a million others. This includes Friday’s assassination of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Iran aligned Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Israel has estimated, conservatively, that the attack which killed Nasrallah may have killed 300 innocent civilians. Not only has Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon not ceased, but last night Israel also launched an invasion of Lebanon.  

Under Article 51 of the UN charter, any and all of these actions by Israel gives the affected state or states the right and responsibility to defend themselves and retaliate to deter further aggression. Tonight, Iran chose at last to exercise that right. Iran launched about 180 projectiles at Israel, targeting military sites around the city of Tel Aviv. Unlike the many strikes Israel has conducted both in Lebanon and Gaza in the past year, Iran did not target any civilian infrastructure. Many of these projectiles were intercepted by Israeli defense assets, but also by two US Navy destroyers in the region. 

Some of the projectiles did hit their intended targets, but we are unlikely to ever know how much damage was actually done. As in the attack in April, retaliating for Israel strike on Iran’s embassy in Damascus, Iran is likely to overstate the damage done while Israel has every reason to understate the damage done.

Echoes of Iraq

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian later declared Iran’s attack on Israel “concluded”. Nevertheless, both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Biden have made it clear that they intend to coordinate some sort of military response to what Biden called Iran’s “brazen attack”. This plays right into Netanyahu’s ambitions to force regime change in Iran, a desire he reiterated only days ago.

This is a particularly dangerous moment, with a grave possibility that Netanyahu and Biden could launch an attack on Iran that will finally spark an all-out regional war. This is a war that Netanyahu has pushed for, and that past US leaders have assiduously avoided, for decades. The parallels with the lead up to the 2003 Iraq war are jarring and foreboding.

The Iraq war is now universally recognized as a historic blunder, costing the lives of a million Iraqis and many thousands of US troops – not to mention trillions in wasted US tax dollars. It also destabilized the region with consequences we are still living with today. Compared to Iraq in 2003, Iran is a far larger and more militarily capable nation, with much larger regional sway. A regime change war in Iran will be many times more costly in every way and the knock-on destabilizing effects could haunt the region for generations. If Biden does choose to go down this path, it will also intensify threats to America’s security and further diminish our standing on the world stage in a way that would make even George W. Bush blush.

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