The pandemic, the Red Sea attack… and now a strike at a U.S. port. Turbulence will return to the supply chain in the coming weeks if wage negotiations between Maersk and the country’s nearly 45,000 port workers fail to succeed, as the failure of dialogue will lead to a work stoppage that will disrupt major trade routes.
The transport giant is not optimistic about the future of the negotiations, which are due on October 1. Talks have been at a standstill for months and it does not seem that an agreement on wage issues can be reached. In anticipation of this scenario, the company has already imposed a surcharge on all goods be moved to and from terminals on the U.S. East Coast and Gulf Coast to cover increased costs resulting from “possible disruptions.”
The strike would affect access routes that carry more than half of all containerized cargo to and from the United States. According to Maersk’s own estimates, a one-week strike could cause disruptions lasting between four and six weeks.
In a statement released collected by BloombergPeter Sand, chief shipping analyst at Xeneta, assures that “the consequences will be serious”In fact, there are already ships carrying “billions of dollars of cargo” at sea bound for the United States that cannot return or are diverted to avoid the strike, which could begin within a week.
Shares of AP Moller-Maersk rose as much as 4.9% on Tuesday, extending recent gains driven by expectations of a deal failure; over the past two weeks, the stock has appreciated nearly 20%.
The “Bad 20s” for maritime freight transport
It will be the latest disruption to global trade, which has been through several turbulences in recent years and seen transport costs rise repeatedly.
With the pandemic, the supply crisis has entered the loop of problems that have collapsed transportation, increased the price of raw materials and energy and exacerbated the lack of essential components such as microchips, the first “perfect storm” for the industry that, in addition, increased production costs and disrupted the market.
The Russian war that began in Ukraine in late February 2022 exacerbated all the symptoms, and the attacks by the Yemeni Houthis on the Red Sea shipping trade that began in late 2023 – one of the most important routes in the world – put the icing on the cake, reducing capacity by half without it having yet been able to return to normal.
