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[Global Times Special Correspondent Wang Pinzhi] The Associated Press reported on the 18th that due to the intensifying labor dispute on Canadian railways, workers of the country's two largest railway companies may go on strike on the 22nd, which may lead to partial interruption of cross-border railway freight between the United States and Canada and affect the North American supply chain. Reuters said that would be a "big disaster."

According to the Canadian Press, due to a deadlock in negotiations with the railway workers' union, Canadian National Railway and Canadian Pacific Kansas City Railway (CPKC) have suspended some cargo transportation. Canadian National Railway issued a notice last week that if a labor-management agreement cannot be reached in time, the company may interrupt the transportation of more bulk commodities. CPKC said earlier this month that the company will temporarily suspend its hazardous materials transportation business to ensure that hazardous materials will not be stranded on the railway in the event of a subsequent strike. Last week, the company interrupted all "inhalation-hazardous" toxic and hazardous materials transportation on its North American railway network. If the labor and management cannot reach an agreement, 9,300 employees of the two companies will stop working on the 22nd of this month.

The Associated Press reported that the two Canadian railway companies have extensive presence in the United States, and CPKC's railway lines also connect to Mexico. The two companies carry up to 40,000 wagons of freight per day, with a value of about $1 billion. Once Canadian railway freight stops, the US-Canada border trade logistics will be greatly affected, and the areas that will be hit hard include automobiles and accessories, chemicals, and agricultural and forestry products. As the agricultural harvest season approaches, the impact of the interruption of US-Canada railway freight on agriculture will inevitably be more serious.

Supply Chain Dive, which focuses on news in the supply chain field, has been tracking the labor-capital dispute of Canadian Railways. The website is not optimistic about the prospects of labor-capital negotiations and disclosed that people in the logistics and transportation industry have been formulating emergency plans for the interruption of railway freight between the United States and Canada since at least May. The article said that in previous labor-capital negotiations of Canadian Railways, if a company had problems in the negotiations and affected transportation, then the transportation could be transferred to the road network of another company, but this time the negotiations between the two companies were carried out at the same time. The materials arriving at Canadian ports are mainly transferred to various parts of Canada and cross-border into the United States by the Canadian Railway network. Railways are an important part of the logistics system. If the railway is suspended for one day, it may take several weeks for the entire network to recover. Once the Canadian Railway freight is interrupted, it can be transferred by truck or transferred to other ports in North America. The capacity of a freight train can be replaced by 300 trucks, but the cost of road transportation is higher than that of railways. The Associated Press quoted industry insiders as saying that once railway freight is suspended, roads can share a certain amount of logistics pressure, but it is not realistic to completely replace railways with road transportation.