DES MOINES, Iowa — A monumental United States port strike has been suspended, according to the Associated Press, but this comes after days of turmoil and impacts spreading across the nation.
Parties agreed on wages and extending the master contract until January 15th, 2025, resuming all work effective immediately.
Some think with Iowa being a landlocked state, the impact wouldn't be felt here, but that is not the case.
Associate Professor of Supply Chain Management at Iowa State University, Peter Ralston, says the immediate impact Iowans could've seen would be on produce like bananas and asparagus. Any produce that is shipped from outside the U.S. would be impacted in some way.
"Things that come from outside the United States, their price is going to increase, because a lot of times those retailers who sell those goods to us, they actually need to bring those in by airplane or air freight, which is much more expensive than shipping," Ralston said.
The strike raised major concerns across the nation as unloading and loading goods from other countries came to a complete halt.
On top of produce, Ralston says automobile and agricultural parts could also be affected.
One Iowan who works on various automobiles already faced a roadblock this week and fears the potential trickle-down effect.
"We're already seeing one car part that he was looking for wasn't available," said Gene Buttrey, an Iowan who works with his friend to fix vehicles. "And the thing of it is, no one in the network was able to tell him when he could get it."
The biggest thing for Iowans is that although some products were at risk of seeing changes, Ralston says Iowa is more of a production state than consumption state. The overall impact a production state feels would be very different than a consumption state.
"The people who might be impacted in Iowa would be a lot of our small business owners, our manufacturers, who want to ship goods leaving Iowa," Ralston said.
Ralston added that if the strike were to continue for longer, that is when seasonal goods like toys and big retail products, would be impacted.