U.S. dockworkers on the East Coast and Gulf Coast walked off the job Tuesday, marking the first large-scale work stoppage among longshoremen in nearly 50 years. This move is predicted to have a huge impact on global shipping and the automotive industry, as new vehicles are slow to come in and out of America.
Now it has emerged that Toyota saw this coming and so began ramping up production to prevent any strike action that could jeopardize Toyota’s ability to ship cars around the world, Reuters reports. The Japanese automaker, which operates factories in places like Mississippi, Alabama, Texas and Tennessee, built up its inventory of vehicles and parts ahead of the U.S. port strikes, as Reuters reports:
Toyota, which relies on ports on the U.S. East Coast and Gulf Coast to import everything from vehicle parts to fully built cars, said it was closely monitoring the situation.
Dock workers on these shores began a strike, their first large-scale strike in nearly fifty years, after negotiations over a new labor contract collapsed.
“We’ve built up some additional inventory here over the last few weeks to help us purchase a few days’ worth of inventory,” said Jack Hollis, chief operating officer at Toyota’s North American division.
The company had plans it could implement to change ports and locations, Hollis said.
“It would only cripple the economy if this continues for too long,” he added.
While Toyota could argue that the increased inventory was in preparation for the dock workers’ strike, this week also revealed that sales for the third quarter of 2024 were down “about eight percent,” according to Reuters. The sales decline was attributed to fewer sales days last quarter, as well as “inflationary headwinds.”
Toyota posted sales of 542,872 units for the third quarter of 2024, following a similar decline in demand from automakers such as Nissan and General Motors.
A version of this article originally appeared in Jalopnik’s The Morning Shift.
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