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Your wallet and confidence should get ready to take a hit.

It's not just the rising crude oil prices in response to anticipation of an attack on Iraq. It's not just the nationwide drought that hurt crops across the country. It's an outgrowth of the 10-day shutdown of West Coast docks. The affected ports handle 42 percent of all U.S. trade shipped by sea, worth about $300 billion.

The Bush administration on Tuesday convinced a federal court to grant a temporary order that ended the shipping companies' lockout of workers, but that's not a long-term solution. If the shippers and unions don't reach a settlement in 80 days, the dispute resumes.

At issue are technological changes and employee security. Dockworkers are accused of a slowdown - unions say they're just being more careful now because five West Coast workers have died on the job this year -- and management has responded with a lockout.

The cost to the U.S. economy has been estimated in the billions per day, as products pile up on the docks. And it will get worse if two sides can't agree on something before the cooling-off period runs out.

In the long run, a port shutdown would have serious economic consequences. We were already facing severe drought conditions in several of the world's largest exporting countries, including Canada, the United States and Australia. With current crops depressed and global inventories low relative to consumption, the old supply-demand equations point to higher prices throughout 2003. This means higher costs for bread, cereal, and meaty products from livestock and poultry that are fed with grain.

Just look at the key commodity indexes. The Commodity Research Bureau's Futures index, a measure of commodity inflation, is up over 17.5 percent from year-ago levels. Energy prices are up 37 percent year-to-date, with heating oil expected to surge more than 40 percent this winter. Grains are up more than 21 percent, making it very expensive for farmers to feed livestock. Farmers have decided to flood the market with live hogs and cattle rather than feed them, but that will deplete livestock for delivery to market and make the price in stores much higher months from now. And precious metals, especially gold - a traditional hedge against inflation - are up 12 percent from year-ago levels.

The supply-demand situation for cocoa is being hurt by current geopolitical and economic uncertainties. An uprising in the Ivory Coast, the leading cocoa producer, has left prices at 16-year highs, and spells trouble for the cost of my daily Grande Mocha -- already just shy of $5 a cup at the local coffee shop.

Far more serious are the potential implications for the holiday shopping season.

Consumers have been holding this economy together by buying autos, apparel, electronics and other items made cheap by global competition. But lack of goods and parts would have made current supply very low relative to demand, and thus forced prices higher. New United Motor Manufacturing, a joint venture run by General Motors and Toyota Motor, recently shut down its auto production lines until more foreign auto parts can be delivered.

The auto industry is more vulnerable than most to a prolonged port shutdown, because car suppliers adopted just-in-time delivery to save on storage costs. Ditto the retail industry, gearing up for the all important holiday shopping season. Apparel from Southeast Asia, electronics and computer equipment from China and Korea may not be ready for early holiday shopping.

The apparel industry is already suffering under the weight of too many stores and shrinking profit margins. Expect shares of major retailers to reflect this current uncertainly, and look for more profit warnings to weigh upon the stock market.

President George W. Bush's Taft-Hartley-based order may only delay the inevitable. The last time a U.S. president invoked the Taft-Hartley Act to halt a similar labor dispute, it turned out to simply a : Richard Nixon in 1971 used the measure to force dockworkers back to the job, and as soon as the injunction expired, the unions went on strike for another 34 days.

Should the current disagreement resume, the end result might be further layoffs in a fragile labor environment, and eroded consumer confidence. That erosion in consumer confidence, already buffeted by corporate scandals, can result in lower spending and raise the specter of a double-dip recession.

Some U.S. importers will turn to alternative domestic producers for some goods, but at a cost - after all, if those U.S. products had been competitively priced, we wouldn't have been importing someone else's goods in the first place. The impact on our Gross Domestic Product will be negative. Growth will slowed, unemployment will rise, and so will inflation.

It's called stagflation -- for stagnant growth and inflation. Not a pretty picture as we try and pull out of a 3-year bear market, fight terrorism and prepare to invade Iraq.