Toilet paper flew off the shelves, but experts say panic buying wasn’t necessary during dockworkers strike

RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) — Toilet paper was hard to come by for some Raleigh shoppers Thursday. At Costco, an employee said they ran out of toilet paper around 1 p.m., and at Wal-Mart the toilet paper was almost off the shelves by early Thursday evening.

Evidence of panic buying was seen at stores across the country during the three-day dockworkers strike, which is now suspended, but experts say panic buying is not necessary.

The dockworkers strike up and down the East Coast is suspended until January 15 as the two sides work on a new agreement.

If the strike were to resume in January, North Carolina State University economist and Reynolds Distinguished Professor Emeritus Michael Walden said toilet paper supply won’t be a problem, so people should not panic buy. He said mainly imports from Europe and Africa like wine, cheeses, and bananas would be affected by an East Coast dockworkers strike. He said the situation is not the same as the scarce shelves of 2020.

“It’s going to be a targeted shortage for certain types of of products, and it’s really not going to affect a lot of people in a broad way,” Walden said.

U.S. manufactured goods are not affected, Walden said. As Gayle Snyder of Raleigh saw when trying to buy toilet paper, even if the strike didn’t impact supply, panic buying did. She said her husband tried about three stores and could not find any toilet paper, which is why she made sure to buy toilet paper at Wegmans Thursday.

“Well, if everybody’s afraid, if everybody thinks it’s going to impact it, then it has impacted it indirectly,” Snyder said. “So, you know, if the toilet paper disappears, it doesn’t really matter why it’s gone.”

People also told CBS 17 they’re buying toilet paper for those in western North Carolina.

Walden said it’s a legitimate question whether some shelves will be bare if many people buy stuff to send to the mountains

“But again, if they are bare, they won’t stay bare for long because stores will just buy more, they’ll order more, and those shelves will be restocked,” Walden said.

He said that is unlike the supply issues of 2020 when U.S. manufacturers shut down.

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