The ILA port worker strike ended on October 3 after the union accepted the USMX offer of a 62% wage increase over the next six years and agreed to extend the expired contract until a January 15th deadline to resolve the remaining sticking points, with the role of port automation chief among them.

The end of the strike meant ports reopened on Friday October 4, but the three-day shutdown was enough to create a significant backlog of containers at ports with an estimated 45 to 60 vessels waiting at anchor across East Coast and Gulf ports.

In air cargo, the surging volume of e-commerce packages out of China has been the biggest driver of strong demand, tight capacity and elevated rates for much of the year. Some carriers are shifting capacity from lower volume regions like South America, South Asia, and Africa to the transpacific and Asia–Europe lanes – which will reduce capacity and could push rates up on those secondary lanes as a result – in anticipation of an extremely busy Q4 as demand for both e-commerce and more typical goods increases during air’s peak season. This new trend of e-commerce goods moving cross-border directly to consumers on a massive scale – and its implications for air cargo – has really been facilitated by the use of the de minimis exception. These low-value e-commerce goods can quickly be shipped via high-cost air cargo because platforms like Temu and Shein can import them under the de minimis exception, which exempts low-value imports from tariffs and significant customs costs and reporting requirements.