New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's progressive agenda is bringing him head-to-head with Amazon, The Wall Street Journal's Isabella Simonetti writes.
At the heart of the showdown is his backing earlier this month of the Delivery Protection Act, which would force warehouse operators to get city licenses by adhering to new safety, training and employment requirements. The Act would also require Amazon to directly hire couriers who are currently employed by smaller firms that deliver its packages. Amazon has said it would consider relocating its warehouses if it passes.
Mamdani has also announced the collection of more than $9 million in idling fines from Amazon delivery vehicles, and sent cease-and-desist orders to online retailers, including Amazon, that the city said were selling illegal e-bikes. Amazon said it requires e-bikes sold in its store to meet applicable safety standards, and that it has worked with city officials to resolve idling fines.
In the battle over the Delivery Protection Act, Amazon has contributed around $5 million to the Five Borough Jobs Campaign, an organization fighting the legislation, according to public records. A study by AKRF, funded by the campaign, found that prices could go up by $664 a year per household if the Delivery Protection Act passes.
Quotable
Global Trade
Canada said it intends to impose tariffs of up to 50% on roughly 700 products as the acrimony between Ottawa and Washington escalates following the collapse of trade talks, the Journal's Paul Vieira reports.
Officials said that, effective Sept. 8, or the day after Labor Day, Canada plans to place tariffs ranging between 15% and 50% on about $20 billion of goods, or roughly 7% of total U.S. imports. Among the products targeted by Canada are U.S. steel, aluminum, motorcycles, washers and dryers, chain saws, processed cheese, clams and frozen octopus.
U.S. steel and aluminum were already subject to a 25% tariff, but that will now double to 50%, officials said. Canada's pending duties are in response to the Trump administration's new 50% tariff on about $20 billion of Canadian imports, which took effect on Saturday after weeks of trade talks broke down.
World trade flows rose sharply in June, aided by the boom in artificial intelligence-related investment and despite the disruption caused by the Iran war. (WSJ)
President Trump threatened to change the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America after trade negotiations between the U.S. and Canada collapsed. (WSJ)
Canadian wholesale trade pulled back in July, with an advance estimate pointing to decline in sales following a big jump in June. (WSJ)
Maritime Security
Prices to insure ships in the Persian Gulf have soared back to their highest levels in decades, reflecting the heightened risk of Iranian attacks. The WSJ's Jean Eaglesham writes that, after dipping on earlier hopes of a lasting ceasefire, rates have shot back up, brokers said.
Insurers are quoting 3% to 6% of a ship's value to cover war risk, many times the typical 0.25% peacetime rate, according to David Smith, head of marine at broker McGill and Partners.
Heightened instability in the Middle East is also pushing up costs for shipping in the Red Sea. Escalating attacks on vessels by Yemen's Iranian-allied Houthi rebels are sending prices soaring, particularly for ships linked to Israel or Saudi Arabia, Smith said. Rates are now typically 0.3% to 1% of the ship's value, compared with 0.1% or less a month ago, Smith added.
Another oil tanker was struck near the Strait of Hormuz overnight amid a high-stakes standoff between the U.S. and Iran to squeeze each other economically. (WSJ)
A.P. Moller-Maersk said it will impose a surcharge of $8,000 per 20-foot-equivalent unit on shipments from South Asia and the Middle East to the U.S. and Canadian West Coasts. (Breakbulk News)
CMA CGM and Saudi Arabia's Red Sea Gateway Terminal agreed to invest $434 million to expand container capacity at Jeddah Islamic Port. (Journal of Commerce)
The Gulf of Aden is becoming too dangerous for seafarers as piracy off the coast of Somalia has revived, the head of the International Maritime Organization said. (Lloyd's List)
Number of the Day
Containers, in 20-foot-equivalent units, waiting to berth at ports worldwide-a new all-time congestion high-mainly because of storms in East Asia disrupting schedules, according to Linerlytica.
In Other News
The Conference Board said its consumer-confidence index fell in August to 89.4 from 90.2 in July. (WSJ)
U.S. home-price growth accelerated in June with a variation throughout regions as inflation cooled. (WSJ)
Extreme heat and droughts in Europe are severely damaging harvests and will likely cause crop failures, according to a European Commission survey. (WSJ)
Boeing clinched a multiyear contract worth up to $131 billion to serve the U.S. Air Force's F-15 program. (WSJ)
Apple is releasing new, higher-priced models of its Mac Mini and Mac Studio desktop machines featuring faster chips for AI. (WSJ)
Aerospace company Melrose Industries said a claims program following a California chemical incident this year will be worth up to $100 million, as it moves toward restarting production at the site. (WSJ)
Ursa Major Technologies is going public through a blank-check merger that will value the defense contractor at roughly $2.3 billion. (WSJ)
Woodside Energy is reviewing its Beaumont New Ammonia facility in Texas, raising the prospect of a sale of the project. (WSJ)
Prosecutors in Taiwan charged nine people, including former Nvidia and Super Micro employees, with aiding the shipment of advanced AI servers to China. (WSJ)
Hanwha Aerospace said it was establishing a new unit, Hanwha Horizon USA, to oversee LNG procurement, sales, trading and logistics optimization. (Business Korea)
Gatik AI raised $200 million in the autonomous trucking startup's biggest funding series to date. (Bloomberg)
The U.S. Postal Service plans to increase rates for several package-shipping services by an average of 6% for the 2026 peak season. (SupplyChainDive)
Freighter capacity to Europe from China has fallen almost 30% from June after a new European Union duty on lower-value packages curbed e-commerce imports. (Air Cargo News)
About Us
Mark R. Long is editor of WSJ Logistics Report. Reach him at mark.long@wsj.com. Follow the WSJ Logistics Report team on LinkedIn: Mark R. Long, Liz Young and Paul Berger.
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