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No Port in a Storm
Striking U.S. dockworkers have the economy by the short hairs, cutting as much as $5 billion daily from U.S. economic activity. That number could rise as the strike by the International Longshoremen’s Association blocks the loading and unloading of everything from food to cars at all ports on the Gulf and East Coasts. Some 60% of U.S. containerized trade moves through the ports in which dockworkers unloaded nearly $600 billion of imports last year, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.
U.S. companies—and consumers—can wait out a strike for a couple of weeks, but beyond that, prices will start rising as shortages appear. Despite lessons learned during the pandemic, the global supply chain is still a tenuous linkage of many parts, says Amir Mousavian, supply chain management professor at the University of New England’s College of Business.
“It’s a global economy and global supply chain,” Mousavian said in an interview. “There has not been sufficient time since the pandemic for all companies to create the resiliency they need.” He said some items are too perishable to be stored, and not every company wants to pay for warehousing months worth of parts and materials.
“When you order something off Amazon, within two days you have the product delivered at your door—we have a supply chain that is very efficient but not resilient,” he said.
The dockworkers are serious. Their leader, Howard Daggett, says he’s seeking a 77% pay hike over six years, raising the base pay for dockworkers to $69 an hour from $39. Employers and shippers offered 40% but upped that to 50% this week under pressure from the White House.
Daggett, 78, has been indicted for fraud but never convicted. In a 2005 trial, witnesses said Daggett was an associate of the Genovese crime family. One of his co-defendants was found dead during the trial in the trunk of a car, and Daggett was acquitted.
Ultimately, says Mousavian, the dockworkers have the upper hand. Their demands are a fraction of the damage they are causing. When fully phased in, the wage hike will cost about $2.1 billion a year, less than half of what the strike costs the economy each day.
“People are going to sit up and realize how important longshoremen jobs are,” Daggett said in an interview at the rally. “They won’t be able to sell cars. They won’t be able to stock malls. They won’t be able to do anything in this country without my f—ing people. And it’s about time they start realizing it,” Daggett told the Wall Street Journal.
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The Usual Suspects
- Elon’s World: October 10 is the day that could define Tesla: Musk will unveil the electric carmaker’s robo-taxi on the Warner Brothers Studio lot in Los Angeles. Wedbush Securities says the unveil will be a “linchpin day for the tesla story.” If it works, the tech upgrade will turn every Tesla into a robo-taxi that could earn $30,000 a year for every Tesla owner, Musk says, which could make Tesla worth $5 trillion. • You can say one thing about Musk—he embodies the current spirit of X. The New York Times held Musk’s own tweets to light, and the results were dismal: Almost a third of Musk’s 171 posts last week were false, misleading, or missing vital context, the newspaper reported. Those posts included a false report of a bomb at a Trump rally. Maybe that’s why Musk’s popularity among Democrats has fallen to 6%. “It’s a damaged brand,” said Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt, who conducted the survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff. • It’s not only Musk’s popularity that’s suffered. Investment giant Fidelity, which helped fund Musk’s $44 billion takeover of Twitter in 2022, says it’s written down its stake by 78.7%. X is now worth $9.4 billion, a loss of a staggering $34.6 billion. • The Lost in Space Chronicles: After the successful launch of a capsule to rescue two NASA astronauts stranded on the International Space Station, Space X’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket was grounded by regulators when its booster failed to properly touch down. The capsule has docked at the International Space Station, and the two space cadets will head back to Earth next year. • Musk’s Brazilian nemesis, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, moved X a step closer to being restored in the country, unblocking X’s local bank accounts after Musk agreed to pay fines of over $5 million for spreading alleged disinformation in Brazil. • Is Musk in a China bind? That’s the contention of Axios, which notes that a Biden Administration move to keep Chinese software out of advanced U.S. vehicles would help Tesla fight off growing competition from cheaper Chinese EVs. If Beijing responds, Teslas could be banned in China, which might be the second-biggest market for Musk’s EV. • Musk nemesis Mark Cuban had some advice for the X-man: No matter how much you help Trump, he will never pay you back. “At the point you need him the most, you will find out what so many before you have learned, his loyalty is only to himself,” Cuban wrote on X. • In a bold move, Musk says he will ban italics and boldface letters on X users’ main timelines. Musk said the typography is being abused for “engagement farming,” adding “My eyes are bleeding.” • In a state that is the pork capital of the world, it’s no surprise that Musk and Donald Trump are hogging credit for giving cellphone customers free access to Starlink on their phones in areas of North Carolina hard hit by Hurricane Helene. FEMA responders have long-standing programs to use Starlink satellites to help residents of hard-hit areas communicate. • Meanwhile, Musk is facing a lawsuit for helping to spread false stories that Haitian residents of Springfield, Ohio, are eating cats and dogs. The Office of the Haitian Diaspora filed a defamation suit in federal court in Miami. • Despite his recent anti-immigration comments, Musk, who was born in Africa, has his own immigrant story, and his brother Kimbal said the two were “illegal immigrants” when they started their first venture. A year ago, Elon Musk said, “As an immigrant to the United States, I am extremely pro-immigrant,” calling for “a greatly expanded legal immigration system, and that we should let anyone in the country who is hardworking and honest and will be a contributor to the United States,” CNN reports. • Elon says he is not having an affair with Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni. “There is no romantic relationship whatsoever with PM Meloni,” Musk wrote on X in response to a post of a photo of the two of them gazing fondly into each other’s eyes at a banquet table.
- Dismal Disney: Hurricanes, competition, and the end of the post-pandemic travel surge are weighing heavily on Disney, with its share price down 29% in the past six months and 36% over the past five years. Analysts at Chicago-based fund manager Raymond James say concerns about Disney’s theme parks division pushed them to downgrade the stock this week from outperform to market perform, and they said they’re getting off the “rollercoaster.” Disney is in the midst of a planned $60 billion investment in theme parks and cruises under Experiences division CEO Josh D’Amaro, a potential successor to Disney chair Robert Iger.
- Rotten Apple: Apple has illegally blocked workers from organizing and advocating for better working conditions, the National Labor Relations Board said. The board’s complaint claims Apple required employees nationwide to sign illegal confidentiality, non-disclosure, and non-compete agreements. Apple allegedly imposed overly broad misconduct and social media policies. Apple said it disagrees with the claims, and an administrative judge will hear the case in January.
- Boeing: The embattled planemaker is considering issuing $10 billion in new stock, equivalent to about 25% of its current market capitalization, to help pay for a punishing strike by the 33,000 union machinists who build its planes and weapons as well as federally mandated safety and quality control slowdowns on its planemaking. Meanwhile, the machinists union urged new CEO Kelly Ortberg to “truly engage” in negotiations.
- Open Agents: OpenAI says AI-powered assistants will become mainstream next year as tech firms race to bring AI agents to consumers. “We want to make it possible to interact with AI in all of the ways that you interact with another human being,” Kevin Weil, Open AI’s chief product officer, said at the company’s developer day. Meanwhile, OpenAI is close to completing a $6.5 billion funding round this week that would value the concern, a non-profit that wants to become a for-profit corporation, at $150 billion.
The Short Stack
- That taxi is so fly: Toyota says it’s betting $500 million on electric air taxis, investing into Joby Aviation’s electric vertical take-off and landing craft. Joby is still waiting for some approvals from the FAA while Toyota has supplied them with components.
- Another brick in the vault: Pink Floyd agreed to sell the rights to its entire catalog to Sony Music for $400 million. Sony gets the rights to the band’s recordings, name, and likeness, the Financial Times reports. Floyd keeps the songwriting royalties. The deal, one of the last for the great rock bands of the late 20th Century, was held up for years by a feud between Roger Waters and David Gilmour, as well as concerns by band members over the tax structure of the deal.
Checking in on the Great Rate Cut
Two weeks after the Fed cut rates by a dramatic half of a percentage point—the first cut in more than two years—how has the economy reacted? Well, the man behind the curtain spoke out Monday at a Nashville conference.
“Overall, the economy is in solid shape; we intend to use our tools to keep it there,” chair Jerome Powell said. Because the Federal Open Markets Committee (which sets the benchmark Federal Funds Rate) has a positive outlook on the economy, he added, “This is not a committee that feels like it’s in a hurry to cut rates quickly.”
Consumers are doing well, with wages outpacing inflation, say Ernst & Young economists Lydia Boussour and Gregory Daco. They noted that real disposable income is now growing at a robust 3.1% year-on-year pace, and real consumer spending growth ticking up to 2.9%. The data, they said, “indicate a more sustainable pace of consumer spending backed by robust income momentum.”
The Fed’s dual mandate—to keep inflation down and employment up—seems to be paying off in both directions. U.S. job openings unexpectedly increased in August after two straight monthly decreases, with 1.13 job openings for every unemployed person in August compared to 1.08 in July, and the number of Americans quitting their jobs fell to the lowest level since August 2020. This puts the economy on track for an expected .25% rate cut in November.
Mortgage rates are still inching downward at about 6.22 % this week, down from 7.35% in August; however, the Fed has less power over mortgages, notes Melissa Cohn, a regional vice president at William Raveis Mortgage. “Rates follow the 10-year yield and not the fed funds rate,” she said. “Renewed concerns that the inflation battle has not yet been won has sent yields up this week and some mortgage rates with it.”
Still, even as some economists worry about a potential rise in unemployment, a recession, or stagflation, Swiss bank UBS says the chance of a boom cycle is 50%.
“It’s no longer too soon nor too optimistic to suggest that the US will experience a Roaring ‘20s economy,” said Jason Draho, head of asset allocation for the Americas at UBS. “It already is by our criteria, with the relevant question being whether these conditions will continue, not whether they will materialize.”
One cloud on the horizon is Donald Trump’s tariff plan. Morgan Stanley economists say the plan would drive up inflation, crimp economic growth, and hurt employment. “If the proposed tariffs are fully implemented, we estimate a near-term acceleration in the inflation rate and a delayed drag in GDP growth,” they wrote in a note Monday.
Peter S. Green is a veteran reporter and editor who has spent more than two decades covering business and finance from Eastern Europe to New York City, and has worked for Bloomberg News, The New York Post, The New York Times and The Messenger. He lives in New York City and is always looking for the next big story.
