The International Longshoremen’s Union, which represents around 45,000 port workers across the East and Gulf coasts, is set to strike next week if a deal is not reached by September 30. This could threaten global supply chains. ITR Economics economist Lauren Saidel-Baker tells Market Domination Hosts Julie Hyman and Josh Lipton that the pandemic era disruptions may have, in some ways, prepared the supply chain for the disruption that could come from a prolonged strike.
“If this strike does, in fact, take effect on the upper end [in terms of duration], this could be as bad or even worse than those initial supply chain disruptions of the pandemic,” Saidel-Baker tells Yahoo Finance.
“The good news is a lot of businesses learned during the pandemic supply chain issues. How do you get around things, and how do you be more flexible? In the [time since the pandemic started], many businesses diversified their sourcing,” the economist says.
She notes the strike “would affect a lot of ports [and] it clearly would be a challenge, but we’ve also seen supply chain issues pop up” during the pandemic and since. Supply chain disruptions have been “an increasing problem, but also that is increasing awareness for a lot of businesses. We are seeing that diversification.”
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This post was written by Naomi Buchanan.
