Asia-Pacific markets slipped on Tuesday, trailing a mixed session on Wall Street.

Investors saw a light day in terms of economic data out of Asian countries. Meanwhile, Hyundai Motor India made its trading debut after a record IPO.

Shares were trading down at 1,860 rupees from their initial public offering price of 1,960 rupees, according to BSE data. The automaker had offered 142.19 million shares at a price band of 1,865 Indian rupees ($22.18) to 1,960 rupees. The IPO fetched 278.56 billion rupees, or $3.3 billion.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was down 1.66% to close at 8,205.7, its lowest level in almost 2 weeks, while South Korea’s Kospi slipped 1.28% and its small cap Kosdaq lost 2.68%.

Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 fell 1.39% to 38,411.96, while the broad based Topix was trading down 1.06% at 2,651.47.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was close to the flatline, while the mainland Chinese CSI 300 inched down 0.21%.

During the U.S. trading session, two Federal Reserve officials had spoken about the trajectory of interest rates.

Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari, noting the U.S.’ resilient economy and strong labor market, said the longer term trajectory for interest rates could be higher than it has in the past.

Dallas Federal Reserve President Lorie Logan said she supports the current move to lowering interest rates, but that a patient approach will be needed.

Overnight in the U.S., stocks ended mixed as Treasury yields rose and investors awaited new earnings reports.

The S&P 500 slipped 0.18% and the 30-stock Dow lost 0.8%, and snapped a three-day run of winning sessions. The Nasdaq Composite was the outlier, rising 0.27%.

— CNBC’s Pia Singh and Sarah Min contributed to this report.

SINGAPORE — Chinese markets skyrocketed over 10% at the open Tuesday, after coming back from the Golden Week holiday as the rally from Beijing’s stimulus measures continued.

The CSI 300 index was up 10.2% in early deals, before paring some gains to record a rise of about 7.5%, but Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index plummeted over 6%.

Other Asia-Pacific markets mostly fell on Tuesday, with investors watching August pay and spending data out from Japan.

Household spending in Japan fell 1.9% year-on-year in August in real terms, a softer fall compared to the 2.6% decline expected by a Reuters poll of economists.

The drop is the fastest pace of decline since January, which saw a 6.3% fall year-on-year. That decline also came before spring wage negotiations delivered the largest pay hikes to unionized Japanese workers in 33 years.

However, real wages rose in August, with data from the country’s statistics bureau indicating that wages climbed 2% to an average of 574,334 yen ($3,877.44).

Overnight in the U.S., stocks slid as rising oil prices and higher Treasury yields weighed on market sentiment.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.94%, while the S&P 500 slid 0.96%. The Nasdaq Composite  saw the largest loss, falling 1.18%.

The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield rose to 4.02%, marking the first time since August that the yield topped 4%.

Oil prices also rose as tensions in the Middle East remain high. U.S. crude climbed more than 3% to settle above $77 per barrel.

— CNBC’s Lisa Kailai Han and Jesse Pound contributed to this report.

President Biden and his administration are sticking to their position of not evoking the Taft-Hartley Act to force International Longshoremen’s Association dock workers back on the job at East and Gulf Coast ports where a strike is hitting day two on Wednesday, a political decision that reflects the power of unions one month out from the election. Rhetoric from Cabinet Secretaries, including Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su, has become more pointed in recent days, pointing the finger at the ports ownership and ocean carriers. But there is a big risk on the other side of the political decision-making: wage increases that are a win for workers but ultimately ripple through the economy in the form of higher prices, both domestically and around the world.

Much of the focus about the economic impact of the ports strike to date has been focused on the direct hit to the economy from the massive trade shutdown, and the ways in which supply chain congestion and delays can result in higher prices being passed along to consumers, which will become a bigger factor the longer a strike persists. But maritime and business experts are also warning about the risk of persistent wage inflation making its way into supply chain prices that the Federal Reserve has recently been successful in taming.

“The wage increase would indeed be passed on and eventually be paid by the importers,” said Lars Jenson, CEO of Vespucci Maritime, a maritime shipping consultant. “The inflationary impact would vary dramatically depending on the value of the goods inside the container,” he said, adding the impact would be even bigger impact for agricultural exporters.

The ILA’s president Harold Daggett is seeking a raise as high as $5 per hour, per year, over a six-year period in a new contract for union port workers from the United States Maritime Alliance. The USMX, which represents port ownership, last offered what it described as a nearly 50% wage increase of six years on Monday, an offer rejected by the union. The USMX reiterated that offer on Tuesday, saying in a statement that its “current offer of a nearly 50% wage increase exceeds every other recent union settlement, while addressing inflation, and recognizing the ILA’s hard work to keep the global economy running.”

But Daggett countered claims of any “significant increase,” saying in the ILA’s own Tuesday statement that the USMX “conveniently omit that many of our members are operating multi-million-dollar container-handling equipment for a mere $20 an hour. In some states, the minimum wage is already $15. … the USMX also overlooks the fact that two-thirds of our members are constantly on call, with no guaranteed employment if no ships are being worked. Our members qualify for benefits only based on the hours they worked the previous year, making them vulnerable if there’s a downturn in work.”

Daggett told CNBC on Tuesday morning that the ILA is seeking a wage increase of 61.5%.

While a significant wage hike would undoubtedly be a big win for workers and a resurgent labor movement, with the union and port ownership group at an impasse ocean carriers have begun to take steps to protect their own financial position in the near-term for as long as a strike persists. CMA CGM, one of the world’s largest ocean carrier, declared force majeure on Tuesday, a legal maneuver to free itself of contract requirements with shipping clients due to forces beyond its control, and said it “may charge any additional operational costs” associated with vessels delayed due to the strike to cargo on the water as of October 1, 2024 with a U.S. East or Gulf Coast port of discharge.

President Biden said on Tuesday that his administration will be “monitoring for any price gouging activity” that benefits foreign ocean carriers, including those on the USMX board. He also said “foreign ocean carriers have made record profits since the pandemic, when Longshoremen put themselves at risk to keep ports open.”

Based on prior port strikes, ocean carriers normally profit from soaring freight rates based on demand for other ports as well as detention and demurrage fees on containers stranded during a ports shutdown. Analysts have been warning ocean spot rates could increase by 20%-50%. UBS forecast that 20% of Maersk’s total volume would touch a U.S. port that would be impacted by the strike. Maersk is on the board of USMX. UBS estimated that if freight rates increased 30% over two quarters, a revenue tail wind of more than $1 billion would be generated.

Buttigieg said on Tuesday that the DOT is monitoring “any attempts by companies to opportunistically raise prices, including ocean shippers or others,” and called on ocean carriers to withdraw surcharges. “No one should exploit a disruption for profit,” he said in a DOT statement. He added that the Federal Maritime Commission will use expanded authority signed into law by Biden to “ensure any fees assessed are legitimate and lawful.”

But the more significant price hikes would occur after a successful deal for the ILA, according to some economists, even though the total number of workers involved in the strike, at around 50,000, is a blip in a U.S. labor market that employs well over 100 million people. It comes amid other union battles across the U.S. economy targeting aviation and automakers. “The scale of wage demands at the ports, at Boeing, and at autoworkers, make one laugh at the claims that the labor market is soft and that wage inflation is dead,” said Larry Lindsey, CEO of The Lindsey Group.

Acting Secretary Julie Su lashed out at the idea that labor wage increases would be passed onto U.S. exporters and importers.

“At the same time that we were urging them to put a fair offer on the table to avoid all the disruption, they were calculating how much of a surcharge they could charge for shipping in light of a strike,” said Secretary Su said in an interview. “I mean, it’s really an outrageous position.”

For months, logistics and business trade groups representing major industries from retail to manufacturing and agriculture have sent numerous letters to Biden and his administration urging intervention. Now, with the president sticking to his position that collective bargaining is the only means for a “fair deal” for the ILA, executives across the economy are beginning to weight the potential pricing impacts for their business models.

“It quickly renders our U.S. agriculture exports much less competitive in the global marketplace,” said Peter Friedmann, executive director of the Agriculture Transportation Coalition of any logistics rate increases his sector would see. “Our foreign customers can satisfy their food, farm, and fiber needs from other countries, which is where they will go,  as costs of moving containers through U.S. ports continue to increase.”

Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su said she is very sympathetic to the needs of the business community, but stuck to the administration’s position. “I’ve been in many conversations with them too,” she said. “I understand just how important the impact of a good resolution is. I know they understand, just as consumers and American workers understand, that foreign companies who profit from our economy and who employ American workers and have an impact on American consumers should do the right thing, and in that battle, we are always going to stand with American workers, American businesses and American consumers.”

The Federal Reserve has recently become more concerned about the labor market than inflation and his begun cutting interest rates to “recalibrate” its monetary policy in a bid to prevent a rise in layoffs and betting inflation is on its way back to 2%, which recent data supports. In the most recent nonfarm payrolls report for August, average hourly earnings increased by 0.4% on the month and 3.8% from a year ago, both higher than estimates. The September nonfarm payrolls report is due out this Friday and in the short-term, the union battle could influence the data on both wages and layoffs.

The upcoming nonfarm payrolls report is the last the Fed will receive before its next interest rate policy decision in November, and it could include downward pressures in the labor market as well, influenced both layoffs related to the strike and Hurricane Helene. The big payroll report immediately ahead of the government data, the ADP private payrolls report, showed that while hiring increased, pay growth has continued to trend down. The annual gain for those remaining in their jobs decreased to 4.7%, while it fell even more for job switchers, to 6.6%, down 0.7 percentage point from August.

“This would just completely complicate everything that the Fed is trying to do because they’re not getting a read to what the economy is actually performing,” Jim Bianco, head of Bianco Research, told CNBC’s “Fast Money” on Tuesday.

In the longer-term analysis, the wage increase being sought by the union will confirm that wage growth is not going back to its pre-Covid trend, of about 2.5%, according to Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer for Bleakley Financial Group. Instead, he estimates it will settle around 4%, which will put a floor under inflation.

“I continue to believe that after the disinflation plays out, which is mostly taking place in goods, 3-4% will be the normalized inflation rate,” said Boockvar. “And this wage deal, when it happens, will result in goods prices to inflect higher.”

“For those dependent on functioning ports for their livelihood, the collateral damage is often underestimated by those watching from afar,” said Alan Baer, CEO of logistics firm OL USA.  

Steve Lamar, CEO of the American Apparel and Footwear Association, said it’s imperative that the Biden Administration use all the tools at its disposal, including its authorities under Taft Hartley, to keep the parties at the negotiating table, the ports opened, and goods moving efficiently. “Allowing the status quo to persist increases the likelihood that this port crisis will hurt our industry and the overall U.S. economy through job losses, higher prices, and goods shortages,” said Lamar.

—Reporting by CNBC’s Jeff Cox contributed to this article.

As she unveiled her most detailed economic plan yet this week, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris pledged to fight price gouging in order to rein in voters’ grocery costs.

The vice president first teased the federal ban in mid-August, prompting former President Donald Trump to attack the plan as “Soviet-style” price controls. Although Harris released more detail Wednesday as part of her 82-page economic plan, it’s still unclear what price hikes her administration would see as illegal “price gouging.”

“The bill will set rules of the road to make clear that big corporations can’t unfairly exploit consumers during times of crisis to run up excessive corporate profits on food and groceries,” the Harris-Walz campaign wrote in the policy pitch, released about six weeks before Election Day.

Higher prices — and who or what is to blame for them — have become a central theme in the presidential race, as steep grocery bills frustrate Americans and retailers anticipate a holiday season marked by deal-hunting. Harris and Trump have each proposed their own solutions to combat inflation, as Americans continue to pay more for groceries, energy, housing and other everyday expenses.

In the last year, prices for food at home have risen just 1%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But groceries are still 25% more expensive than they were in August 2019, before supply chain snarls and inflation sent prices soaring.

Voters will ultimately weigh in on what role government leaders should play in companies’ pricing. Generally, Republicans support fewer economic regulations, although Trump has suggested limiting food imports as a way to lower grocery prices. Economists have warned that the strategy would likely backfire.

Halting price hikes is a popular idea with voters. Sixty percent of adult U.S. citizens support capping increases on food and grocery prices, according to a poll by The Economist/YouGov conducted from Aug. 25-27.

Still, Harris would face a tough road to passing any price-gouging legislation in Congress, and it’s still not clear how cracking down on price increases would work in practice.