For the first time in nearly half a century, the longshoremen of the East and Gulf Coasts staged a walkout with a worker’s strike poised to cut off most of the trade at some of the busiest ports in America.

The strike comprised members from the International Longshoreman’s Association, set up their picket lines in the early morning hours on Tuesday after talks stalled at the 11th hour.

“Nothing’s going to move without us — nothing,” ILA President Harold J. Daggett said to picketers outside a port terminal at Elizabeth, New Jersey, in a video posted early Tuesday to an ILA Facebook account.

The strike involves approximately 25,000 dock workers and stretches along coastlines from New England to Texas. Among the major ports affected by the work stoppage with a full closure are New York/New Jersey’s Port Elizabeth, Miami, Houston, Tampa, and Philadelphia.

In an additional statement released on social media, Mr. Daggett said that the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) “brought on this strike” by allowing the foreign-owned entity Ocean Carriers to make billions off the backs of the dockworkers his union represents.

“We are prepared to fight as long as necessary, to stay out on strike for whatever period of time it takes, to get the wages and protections against automation our ILA members deserve,” he said. “USMX owns this strike now. They now must meet our demands for this strike to end.”

Mr. Daggett, who earned over $700,000 as ILA president in 2021, also said that longshoremen have a right to a piece of the increased profits made by global companies like Ocean Carriers during the pandemic trade boom of 2021 and 2022.

“They want to make their billion-dollar profits at United States ports and off the backs of American I.L.A. longshore workers and take those earnings out of this country,” Mr. Daggett said.

The laborers’ walkout comes as American ports are consistently the lowest-ranked facilities worldwide. A June 2024 report from the Container Port Performance Index on port rankings for 2023 shows that America doesn’t even break the top ten ports on the planet. The highest ranking for a stateside port was Charleston, South Carolina, at 53. The East Coast’s largest port, Port Elizabeth in New Jersey, ranked a paltry 92 on the list. 

The ILA has demanded a sizable increase in wages and a total ban at ports of automated cranes, gates, and container-moving trucks. The union has claimed that during negotiations, the USMX’s last offer “fell far short of what ILA rank-and-file members are demanding in wages and protections against automation.”

Under their contract, which expired on Monday, dockworkers along the East and Gulf Coasts were paid $39 an hour. The union is seeking a 77 percent raise, doled out at $5-an-hour each year of a new six-year contract. According to the New York Times, officials with USMX had “traded counteroffers related to wages” and offered a nearly 50 percent raise.

The ports affected by the work stoppage handle about half of all ship cargo into the country. Economic experts fear a prolonged strike could raise the cost of consumer goods and shortages as the holiday season approaches. Analysts predict that a one-week strike could cost the American economy a staggering $3.8 billion.

“Shipments diverted to the West Coast and then placed on freight networks to ship east could add at least a week of transit time and additional costs,” Wedbush Securities analysts said in a note to investors. “We see potential for ripple effects even for those with limited exposure to shipments originally bound for the East Coast and Gulf Coast.”

Ports along the Western portion of the country operate under a different union and are already working under a new contract.

The strike also comes at a precarious time for the Biden-Harris administration, with less than five weeks before the presidential election. The president, a long ally of organized labor, has declined to intervene in the talks so far, but in a statement released on Tuesday, White House officials said that he and Vice President Harris are “monitoring potential supply chain impacts and assessing ways to address potential impacts.”

Business groups are already calling for Mr. Biden to take action if the strike continues for an extended period.

“The president can protect manufacturers and consumers by exercising his authority, and we hope he will act quickly,” Jay Timmons, CEO of The National Association of Manufacturers said in a statement to CBS News.

While the ILA has not endorsed a presidential candidate for the upcoming elections, the organization and its president, Mr. Daggett, have long supported President Trump. In the aftermath of the failed assassination attempt in July against the candidate, Mr. Daggett urged union members at a rally to pray for Trump.

In November 2023, the two men met at Mar-a-Lago for what Mr. Daggett described as a “wonderful, productive 90-minute meeting” during which Trump pledged support for the union’s opposition to the use of automated equipment at port terminals.