LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – As the dock worker strike keeps ports shut down on the East Coast, many people in the Las Vegas Valley are stocking up on goods, mainly water and toilet paper. A Costco employee says their store sold out of both on Monday and Tuesday.
But Bryan Wachter with the Retail Association of Nevada says those aren’t the products we should be worried about.
“85% of the bananas in the United States, for instance, are imported from an East Coast port,” said Wachter. “Some specialty foods that might be imported from Europe, like Italian meats and cheeses. A lot of the imported alcohol comes from our East Coast.”
He said some car imports from the East Coast could be stalled, too.
Experts agree that depending on the duration of the strike, it could impact supplies of certain goods in Nevada.
“We could see that supplies from the West Coast have to be shipped over to the East Coast, so we could continue to see increases in prices for our goods. We could even potentially see shortages,” said Amanda Belarmino, associate professor at the UNLV College of Hospitality.
However, they say it would take a while to see those impacts.
“But we are sitting, especially after COVID, with a lot of supply in various different categories already on shore and in warehouses. We’re talking about not being able to process things that we might need 6, 7, 8 weeks out.”
In the meantime, Wachter says the best thing consumers can do is stick to their normal shopping habits—no need to stock up.
Wachter also says for every day the supply chain is cut off, it takes about four days to recover, so even when the strike is over, it’s still going to take some time to get things back to normal.
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