This week we got a pre-election October surprise: a widespread strike thatbj88, depending on its duration, could lead to commodity shortages, higher prices and, ultimately, layoffs. It is landing at a time when voters are particularly upset about higher prices and in a cycle when the two major candidates are virtually tied.

This could have been avoided. Both President Donald Trump and President Biden briefly grappled with some of the forces that led to it, as did Congress in 2010, but none of these efforts were effective. It is long past time to fix the regulatory regime that created this mess.

Just after midnight on Tuesday, the dockworkers represented by the International Longshoremen’s Association went on strike across ports from Maine to Texas that control about three-fifths of the country’s container shipments. Shippers are scrambling to find alternatives, but the size of the strike is big enough to shock supply chains for agricultural products, automobiles and more.

The two sides are fighting over a big pot. Shipping industry profits exceeded $400 billion from 2020 to 2023. Even though many dockworkers earn as much as $39 per hour and can earn $100,000 or more with overtime and shift work, the workers want more of that pie in the form of a 77 percent pay increase over the next six years. The union is also demanding a total ban on the automation of cranes, gates and container-moving trucks used in the loading and unloading of freight. The union went on strike because its demands were not met.

The substantial profits both sides are fighting over weren’t derived from admirable business practices. They come from century-old government regulations that protect the industry and its ports, and they result in less innovation, less efficiency and higher prices for everybody — even in the best of times.

Over a century ago, U.S. lawmakers threw the industry numerous safety nets, believing that our military might need to someday deploy our nation’s private shipping fleet in a wartime emergency and that shipping was vital to the then-developing economy. That’s why for more than 100 years, ocean carriers have typically enjoyed an exemption that allows them to meet with their rivals and fix rates for a scheduled service on a particular route. That’s also why the 1920 Jones Act decreed that ships carrying goods from one U.S. port to another must be built in the United States, fly the American flag and be mostly owned and operated by American companies and crews.

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