Americans should brace themselves for potentially staggering inflation as tens of thousands of dockworkers go on strike along the East and Gulf Coast states in the US. The International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) workers walked off the job at midnight on October 1st. Every port from Maine to Texas is shut down and containers are not getting moved. If a deal between the two sides is not reached soon, the inflation that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris deliberately caused in America is about to get much worse.

With a total of 36 ports shut down, approximately half the goods moving in and out of the United States are now blocked. Businesses will start to feel the crunch immediately. JP Morgan Chase has estimated that the strike will cost the US economy about $5 billion in production for every day that it lasts. For every day of a shutdown because of a strike, it takes six days to unravel the supply chain from the effects.

In other words, if this strike lasts more than a week, Americans are likely to see empty store shelves for their Black Friday shopping on the Thanksgiving weekend.

If the strike lasts more than a week, industry analysts say we’ll start to shortages and rising prices on fresh foods like fruits (especially bananas and cherries this time of year), meat, fish, and cheese. Those things have to be stored at the correct temperature for shipping and they don’t have much of a shelf life if they have to sit in an unloaded container for very long.

Some cargo ships have already started diverting to the West Coast, where the ports are still open. By the time they make their way through the Panama Canal and up to San Diego and Los Angeles, those ports will start to become overcrowded, further snarling the supply chain. A lot of fresh foods may have spoiled by then. That means shortages at the grocery stores, followed by more inflation as the market adjusts to the new scarcity.

Do you know who is really going to get screwed by this strike if it lasts a few days or longer? The people who just lost their homes in Hurricane Helene.

Imagine that your house just got wiped out and turned into matchsticks by the storm. Your insurance adjuster promises you $400,000 to rebuild the home. What a relief!

Except now the building materials that they need are sitting on shipping containers and the price will triple by the time the strike wraps up. Even if their insurance covers the “replacement” cost to rebuild their homes, the price of the materials will be far more in just a few weeks. Those people will never be able to rebuild because of this strike.

The ILA, which has endorsed every Democrat for president dating back to the 1970s, is trying to play the victim card over this strike. They want higher wages and they’re battling against automation. Because the dockworkers’ unions have fought automation, America now has some of the slowest and least efficient ports in the world among comparable advanced nations. Don’t fall for the “we’re so poor” nonsense from the ILA.

In fact, if you’re feeling the slightest bit of sympathy for them, watch this video from the ILA president. He owns a 76-foot yacht and drives a Bentley, and he takes home a salary of nearly a million dollars a year from the union:

“I will cripple you.” —Harold Daggett, leader of ILA. #PortStrike #ILA pic.twitter.com/77Sy22ldbS

— Indy (@indygerl) September 30, 2024