THERE are times when traffic flows steadily into Manhattan through the Lincoln Tunnel, crossing under the Hudson river from New Jersey. But in peak periods, it’s much more stop-and-go, and when there’s an accident in the tunnel, prepare to spend hours at a standstill on the entrance ramp in Weehawken, enjoying the famous view of Manhattan’s skyline, so close and yet so far.

If the International Longshoremen’s Association goes on strike at 12:01am on Tuesday, it will be like a car crash inside the Lincoln Tunnel, but with a key difference: It will be a traffic jam that shippers and carriers knew was likely to happen months in advance, with preordained timing down to the minute.

Barring an 11th-hour deal, the containership queues will begin building next week at the anchorages off New York, Portsmouth, Savannah, Charleston, Miami and Houston. It would be a familiar sight: Over 100 containerships were stuck waiting off US east and Gulf coast ports two years ago amid the supply chain crisis. It could happen again soon.

Lessons learnt from past disruptions

Lessons learnt from past disruptions will come into play if there is a strike. Shippers and carriers are now highly experienced with ship queues and route diversions. They developed their strategies in the pandemic years and honed them further during the Panama Canal drought and Red Sea crisis.

This time around, carriers will have much more capacity at their disposal to deal with the disruption, which would quickly spread across global networks. New ships and new container equipment are being manufactured in record volumes.

US importers will also be better prepared. They had ample warning of this disruption (unlike in the pandemic and after Houthi attacks in the Red Sea) and they frontloaded this year’s cargo as an insurance policy. On the export front, shippers have much more flexibility in their supply chains, courtesy of new route options developed in recent years.

Even so, it would be ugly.

Not all imports can be brought in early and not all importers can afford to do so. Not all exports can be rerouted at a cost that makes sense.

Both imports and exports would face severe capacity constraints at alternate ports. The cargo that does get through would take longer to get where it’s going. Financial fallout to the US economy would be steep, regardless of the frontloading of imports.

Let the blame game begin

A strike at US east and Gulf coast ports would immediately devolve into a blame game.

Right-wing commentators blamed US President Joe Biden for failing to sufficiently address the supply chain crisis during the pandemic and accused him of causing inflation through his inaction. Biden, in turn, blamed the foreign ocean carriers. The actual culprits were everyday Americans who bought too much stuff too quickly, and pandemic-era stimulus packages from both Biden and former president Donald Trump that were, in retrospect, too generous.

Biden — and by extension, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris — will be blamed if Biden does not immediately invoke the Taft-Hartley Act and force an 80-day cooling-off period. It Taft-Hartley is not invoked, Democrats will be accused putting their need for union votes in November’s election above the needs of the country and facilitating supply chaos. Trump will be quick to use strike fallout against Harris.

Biden will probably try to deflect blame toward the foreign shipping lines of the dockworker employers group, the US Maritime Alliance. He previously attacked shipping lines during the pandemic, saying he was “viscerally angry” and felt like he wanted to “pop” someone, presumably a carrier executive.

USMX will blame the ILA, and the ILA will blame the foreign carriers. Its president Harold Daggett has already done so.

Shippers will blame the carriers for higher costs, as they did during the pandemic. Indeed, there is already a conspiracy theory floating around shipper circles, recounted to Lloyd’s List, alleging that carriers are privately okay with a strike because they made a fortune during Covid, the Red Sea crisis further buoyed their returns, and they believe a new disruption will be profitable.

Do the ILA dockworkers deserve a big raise in their next contract? West coast dockworkers of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union certainly got one, available salary information implies ILWU workers are better compensated than ILA workers, and carriers are historically flush with cash, so one can argue that they do deserve a large pay hike.

But there is one major aspect of the ILA negotiating position that does not benefit anyone except ILA members: the union’s staunch opposition to automation.

The need for more US port automation

Daggett summed up the ILA position in June when lambasting a Maersk automated truck gate in Mobile. “Who the hell is a foreign company like Maersk to come to US soil and build fully automated terminals? This foreign company Maersk tries to shove fully automated terminals down our throats and for what reason? To eliminate good-paying American jobs, ILA jobs,” said Daggett.

The reality is: America’s ports need more automation.

US import volumes continue to organically increase as the economy grows. Import volumes will continue to rise over the coming years. The ability to build new ports along the country’s coastlines is inherently limited, therefore cargo traffic must flow through existing port system chokepoints more quickly and more efficiently in the future.

As in any traffic system, something has to give. In the case of Manhattan, the number of vehicles going to the city keeps rising, while there are no plans for new tunnels or bridges to serve vehicles. It’s crucial that vehicles get through the traffic chokepoints as fast as possible, thus the use of the automated EZ-Pass system at the toll booths.

The EZ-Pass system was installed at the Lincoln Tunnel almost three decades ago — in 1997. It’s time for US east coast and Gulf coast ports to catch up. As Bloomberg rightly put it: “Port workers deserve a raise but not a veto on progress.”

To the extent the automation issue and not a pay dispute creates a new traffic jam of vessels and cargo off east and Gulf coasts beginning next week, the politicians, citizens and shippers of America should be blaming the ILA.