This sight in many branches of Aldi, Lidl and other supermarkets takes us back to a time that we are anything but fond of. They are pictures like those at the beginning of the corona pandemic in 2020.
Back then, too, there were so-called hoarding purchases at discounters such as Aldi and Lidl as well as other retail chains. The primary goal of hamster buyers: toilet paper.
Toilet paper is being hoarded again
In the past few days there have been many pictures of empty supermarket shelves circulating on social networks. Once again, the customers of Aldi, Lidl and Co. were after toilet paper, which was being hoarded obsessively. How did the scenes come about?
The images come from the USA. Dock workers there are currently organizing a major strike – especially on the east and Gulf coasts. They are demanding a significant wage increase of around 70 percent after their employers recently offered them “only” 50 percent more salary.
US election 2024: Kamala Harris vs. Donald Trump – HERE you can find all the information about the election
Dock workers are fighting for more pay
The longshoremen of California serve as a role model. They have achieved massive wage increases through strikes in recent years and now earn an hourly wage of around $55 (50 euros), while their colleagues on the east coast have to be content with $39.
The dock workers in the east no longer want to accept this and are now on a large-scale strike. 45,000 workers at 36 ports are currently stopping work.
The consequences: Experts expect that the strikes will have a significant impact on US trade. The volume of import and export goods would fall in the short term and large traffic jams of container ships would form in front of the ports.
Also interesting: More supermarket topics
Panic buying is just stupid
And this takes us back to the hoarder purchases in American supermarkets. Given the trade issues surrounding the port strikes, many Americans are concerned that there could be a toilet paper shortage. That’s why many Americans have been stocking up on this product in large quantities in the past few days.
Customers shared pictures and videos from the American branches of Aldi, Lidl and other supermarket chains on social networks. “My friend just sent me these pictures from a Walmart in north Georgia,” writes entrepreneur Bruce Hunter on Twitter (see tweet under this paragraph): “No bread. No Me. No eggs. No juice. And no paper products. He then went to Aldi and it looked exactly the same.”
View content from Twitter
At this point there is external content from Twitter / X that is recommended by our editorial team. It complements the article and can be displayed and hidden again with one click.
I agree to this external content being displayed to me. Personal data may be transmitted to the content provider and third-party services.
However, this approach not only shows a blatant lack of solidarity, but is also pretty stupid. By far the majority of toilet paper sold in America is “Made in the USA”. The same logically applies to fresh products such as bread or milk. This means that these products are not even affected by possible import problems.
