ST. LOUIS – Although the dockworkers’ union has agreed to suspend its planned strike until January 2025 to allow more time for negotiations, that has not stopped consumers from panic buying home goods and supplies, specifically toilet paper.
“I was at the store and a lady bought eight things of toilet paper,” Darian Lester said earlier Thursday. “Looks like it’s going to be everybody panicking, but I don’t think it’s going to be that bad.
Even though paper goods like toilet paper and paper towels are made domestically, even here in the Show Me State, fears of closed ports along the eastern seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico had some people rushing to stores to stock up.
“From a supply chain perspective, toilet paper is not getting imported from anywhere. Supply chains in the U.S. can produce more than we need,” Panos Kouvelis, professor of supply chains and technology at Washington University St. Louis, said. “Even a week or a few months of a strike isn’t going to affect toilet paper. It’ll affect other things, but not toilet paper.”
The professor says St. Louisans and Americans shouldn’t worry about a lack of TP. But if the strike goes on for more than two weeks, produce will be the first thing consumers will notice.
“Probably any fresh produce coming from Latin America, like bananas,” he said. “We will start seeing that we don’t have as much inventory of these kind of fresh produce.”
“I think people get a little bent out of shape when they’re perceived as a little scarcity,” Phil Hengen said. “We got through COVID and kept ourselves clean and had enough toilet paper, so I think we’re going to be okay.”
