The coalition negotiating on behalf of employers in the ongoing dockworkers strike includes a Beijing-based shipping company, raising concern over potential Chinese economic and political influence.
Thousands of dockworkers at 14 different major ports along the East and Gulf Coasts went on strike shortly after midnight Thursday, with experts claiming the move could wreak havoc on U.S. supply chains and cost the economy as much as $5 billion a day. China Ocean Shipping Company’s (COSCO) membership in the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) — the group responsible for hammering out a deal with the port workers — means China could wield significant influence over the labor negotiations, according to experts who spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“With our general elections just one month away and the role that the Chinese Communist Party plays in all [People’s Republic of China] entities, COSCO’s role in the maritime alliance is a reasonable concern,” Steve Yates, senior fellow for China and national security policy at the Heritage Foundation, told the DCNF. “Economic interests would suggest they want all exports from China moving smoothly into the US market running into the year-end holiday season, but sometimes politics is in command in Beijing.”
COSCO — the world’s fourth largest container shipping company — accounts for over 10% of the world’s shipping, with its holdings ranging from e-commerce warehouses in Savannah, Georgia, to a stake in a major port terminal in Hamburg, Germany. The shipping giant serves as a vehicle for Chinese economic coercion, providing the country the ability to affect the global flow of goods due to the company’s extensive asset holdings, significant market share and nature as a state-owned corporation, a 2023 study from the Atlantic Council found.
“Any organization that is captured by the influence of the CCP poses a danger to the U.S.,” Nick Iacovella, senior vice president of public affairs and communications for the Coalition for a Prosperous America, told the DCNF.
A congressional probe released on Sep. 12 found that U.S. ports are “dangerously reliant” on Chinese cargo cranes, reporting that roughly 80% of seaport cranes in the U.S. were made by Chinese company ZPMC and thus could be accessed by the CCP.
“China’s largest shipping company COSCO has a rep[resentative] on the Maritime collective USMX negotiating on behalf of our port operators,” Republican Florida Rep. Mike Waltz wrote on X Tuesday. “We also have a dangerous number of our largest ports operated with Chinese cranes and Chinese software.”
The USMX is largely comprised of Asian and European mega-corporations, including France’s CMA CGM, and Denmark’s Maersk. The shipping industry is foreign-dominated more broadly, with the top 10 global carriers, all of which are foreign, controlling nearly 80% of global shipping.
“I have urged USMX, which represents a group of foreign-owned carriers, to come to the table and present a fair offer to the workers of the International Longshoremen’s Association that ensures they are paid appropriately in line with their invaluable contributions,” President Joe Biden said in a statement Tuesday. “Ocean carriers have made record profits since the pandemic and in some cases profits grew in excess of 800 percent compared to their profits prior to the pandemic….My Administration will be monitoring for any price gouging activity that benefits foreign ocean carriers, including those on the USMX board.”
An elongated strike could place upward pressure on consumers who are already weary of Biden-era inflation, and thus could be politically disastrous for Democratic electoral chances, as over 80% of registered voters say the economy will be “very important to their vote,” according to a September Pew Research Center poll. At the same time, if Biden intervenesto end the strike, he’d risk alienating the Democratic party’s organized labor constituency.
“It is the consumer that will feel the impact,” George Kochanowski, CEO of logistics company Staxxon, told the DCNF.
USMX, COSCO, CMA CGM, and Maersk did not respond to requests for comment.
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