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With the 2024 US Presidential election now a week away, the race for the top job has seen tremendous rancor, yelling, inuendo and accusations, dare we say “fake news” coming all directions, but very little of it directly impacts the shipping markets. At the very highest levels, both sides have expressed concerns about maritime security and have been conjuring up plans for re-invigorating US-flag commercial shipping, with positive spin-offs for military applications. In the next few years, regardless of show wins on November 5th, look for security concerns to exert an outside influence on the US maritime scene.
The subject of tariffs on imports has also come up, with Trump most vocal about using restrictions on trade as part of his policies to bring manufacturing back to the States.
Participants in supply chains, with a maritime- surface interface, are a highly anticipatory and reactive bunch, and preparations for disruptions due to natural disasters (such as hurricanes) or labour actions are routine for port planners and their brethren on the cargo owning side. Generally, the disruptions are Administration agnostic.
The 2024 election has been rich with yelling back and forth, from both sides regarding Administration aid in the wake of two back-to back hurricanes impacting the southeastern United States notably including port operations in Tampa FLA, Savannah GA and Charleston SC. The business dodged a bullet with a very short labor strike by the International Longshoremen’s Union (ILU) at the beginning of October.
As cargo volumes shifting to the West Coast have caused record throughputs at Los Angeles and Long Beach, there is still some concern as both sides, now back at the negotiating table, are still facing a mid-January 2025 deadline for final agreement. Both sides in the Presidential election have positioned themselves as friends of labour. Indeed the 62% pay raise over six years granted to dockworkers in early October, described as “generous”, was likely helped along from prodding by the Biden folks not wanting to have a nasty strike, with all the disruptions, just prior to the 2024 elections.
Related: Biden administration to bring port crane manufacturing back to the US
One sector where the winners in the election could strongly influence development is offshore wind- which had been strongly pushed by the Biden administration, following a near-complete stoppage in approvals during the previous Trump administration and mentioned by Trump in the 2024 campaign. Because of the highly bureaucratic and intricate nature of project approvals (or not), a Republican victory would likely slow down projects in the regulatory “pipeline” not yet approved.
At the very highest levels, both sides have expressed concerns about maritime security and have been conjuring up plans for re-invigorating US flag commercial shipping, with positive spin-offs for military applications).
Importantly, one response likely to gain traction in 2025, when the new 119th Congress is sworn in, is the bi-partisan , legislation dubbed the “Ships for America Act”, on hold in the waning Congressional session, will likely be back on the new Congress’s 2025 calendar. Introduced by Senators Mark Kelly (Democrat - Arizona), Marco Rubio (Republican - Florida), and Representatives Mike Waltz (Republican -Florida) and John Garamendi (Democrat - California), the bill would aim to revitalise US shipbuilding capacity, build back its shipyard workforce and crew newly built ships with American mariners.
One talking point from Congressman Waltz prior to its introduction described the legislative bill as: “a not so gentle nudge” to the Biden administration and to any future administrations that the “strength of the US Navy will be underlined by the strength of our maritime industry.”
And then, there’s high-level geopolitics- with the Red Sea especially having led to longer voyages and stronger markets than otherwise. Biden efforts, with Kamala Harris on the team, to tamp down hostilities have, so far, been unsuccessful, while Trump portrays himself as a peace-maker.
Irrespective of who emerges victorious next week in the US election, it is difficult bordering on impossible to predict what might happen, and what the resultant impacts on commercial shipping patterns and cargo flows, along the Red Sea and Middle East region, might be.
