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The Port of Vancouver, in British Columbia, where the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 members are locked out amid a labor dispute.
Port strike puts trade at risk – and Liberals in awkward position
The economic costs of the deadlock will add up quickly. Roughly US$800 million in goods pass through the West Coast ports every day, including a fifth of cross-border US-Canada trade. Past port strikes have snarled exchange, gummed up supply chains, and frustrated businesses and consumers alike. This one threatens to do the same.
The strike puts the governing Liberals in an awkward position. The government wants to keep commerce flowing but is hesitant to step in and force a resolution, perhaps with legislation ordering workers back to work. The New Democratic Party, on whom the Liberals rely to remain in power, is against circumventing the collective bargaining process, which means the port strike isn’t the only showdown to watch.
For now, Labour Minister Steve MacKinnon is urging the parties to strike a deal at the bargaining table and says federal mediators are “on site, ready to assist the parties.”A commuter Seabus passes idle shipping cranes towering over stacked containers during a strike by dock workers at Canada's busiest port of Vancouver, British Columbia.
Canadian dock workers to go back to work, but UPS strike still on
Right on the buzzer Thursday, over 7,000 workers at some of Canada’s busiest ports — including Vancouver and Prince Rupert — accepted a settlement proposed by a federal mediator to end their strike.
The dock workers stopped going to work to demand higher wages on July 1st, slowing down $377 million in trade per day. Bringing the two ports to a near halt was nothing to sneeze at, since they handle one-third of goods coming to and from Canada. Economists had warned that if the strikes dragged on much longer, they could have eventually forced the central bank to hike rates even more right when inflation was finally starting to go down.
Meanwhile, in the US, unionized employees of the private shipping firm UPS are still counting the days until their contract expires on July 31st after failing to reach a deal over better pay and working conditions. UPS workers move merchandise worth an estimated 6% of America's GDP, and if the 68% represented by the main union don't show up, only 160,000 workers will be left to do the work normally done by 500,000. It could be the biggest single-employer strike in US history.
The twin strikes are very bad news for the Canadian and US economies right when broken supply chains were just beginning to recover from COVID, and inflation was starting to ease. Those trends could be reversed if more employers and unions in this crucial industry don't find common ground soon.
No one wants a throwback to late 2021-style inflation supercharged by broken supply chains.Aerial view of the Port of Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada.
Hard numbers: Vancouver port peril, bye-bye biofuels?, US-Mexico corn clash, smuggler feels the cold
99.24: Amid fraught labor contract negotiations at ports up and down the West Coast, an overwhelming 99.24% of ILWU Canada members voted to support a strike that could begin as soon as June 24. If that happens, operations at Vancouver, Canada’s largest port, could grind to a halt, dealing a blow to commerce on both sides of the US-Canada border: Some 15% of Vancouver’s container trade moves to or from the US.
10 billion: Canada’s biofuels producers are mulling a move south of the border in an exodus that could cost Canada as much as $10 billion in renewables investment. The culprit? You guessed it: the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, which offers massive subsidies. Biofuels, as a reminder, are renewable, low-carbon energy sources derived from organic matter — ethanol, for example, which comes from corn.
3 billion: Speaking of corn, Canada has taken Washington’s side in a US-Mexico dustup over the crop. The Mexican government wants to ban genetically modified corn, which it says is harmful to humans and animals. That would upend some $3 billion in annual US corn exports to Mexico. Washington has asked for a dispute resolution panel to resolve the issue. Canada isn’t a big corn player itself, but as the world’s largest canola exporter, it worries about backlash against genetically modified crops more broadly. Fun fact: Corn was first domesticated 9,000 years ago in what is today … Mexico!
1.5: A Georgia man has been sentenced to 1.5 years in a US prison for trying to smuggle 7 suspected illegal Mexican immigrants into Canada last year. His plan fell apart in North Dakota when freezing temperatures forced him to call the local sheriff for help.