Remember the Great Toilet Paper Panic of 2020? In the first few months of the Covid-19 pandemic, massive supply chain disruptions led to shortages of many basic goods, including — crucially — toilet paper. People bartered face masks and hand sanitizer in exchange for precious rolls. Criminals attempted daring toilet paper heists. Bidet sales soared.
More than six years later, Americans are freaking out over a potential surge in toilet paper prices after President Donald Trump’s trade war with Canada. Canada is the United States’ largest supplier of toilet paper imports, which are now subject to a 50% tariff thanks to Trump. (Facial tissues, paper towels and napkins are tariffed, too.)
Call it another stain on Trump’s handling of the economy.
Americans are freaking out over a potential surge in toilet paper prices after President Donald Trump’s trade war with Canada. Canada is the United States’ largest supplier of toilet paper imports, which are now subject to a 50% tariff.
In truth, there’s no need for a mega-cache of Cottonelle. Though Canada sent about $328 million worth of toilet paper to America in 2024, according to the World Bank, imports account for only 5% of American toilet paper consumption because of robust domestic production. (The U.S. is the second-largest manufacturer of toilet paper after China.) And while some U.S. manufacturers rely on Canadian wood pulp as raw material, pulp has been exempt from broader disputes between the two countries on softwood lumber and other lumber-related products.
Nevertheless, the virality of this story, as well as the pandemic panic of 2020, attest to an intriguing insight about Americans’ psyche: that as a symbol of consumer confidence, access to affordable TP might have even more resonance than prices at the pump. The Trump administration makes a mistake if it underestimates Americans’ worries over this lowly consumer staple.
Granted, some of the wall-to-wall coverage of a potential toilet paper crisis is due to its novelty. (The press has been on a roll with toilet paper puns.) But unlike gasoline, toilet paper is a universal need that cuts across all households, regardless of geography, ideology and income. Not everyone has a car, but everyone uses the bathroom.
And compared to the rest of the world, Americans are uniquely obsessed with bathroom tissue. Though China beats the U.S. in sheer volume of usage, by dint of its much larger population, Americans lead the world in per capita consumption. According to Tissue World Magazine (yes, that’s a real publication), the average American uses 25 kilograms of toilet paper per year — or the equivalent of about 144 megarolls of Angel Soft.
The annual U.S. market for toilet paper is about $10 billion and growing, led by rising demand for “premium” and eco-friendly options.
Toilet paper prices are in fact rising, though as a result of overall inflation, not the acute shock of a trade war. One LendingTree analysis found that household paper products, such as toilet paper and paper towels, have been among the worst examples of “shrinkflation” — that is, when consumers are charged the same amount for less of a product. In this case, compared to before the pandemic, consumers are paying the same or higher prices for fewer sheets of toilet paper per roll. Manufacturers also expect to boost prices further this year, citing the war in Iran. With rising fuel prices driving up the cost of materials, production and freight, according to government data, the Producer Price Index for “sanitary tissue paper products” has hit at an all-time high.
It’s a bad sign for the GOP that consumers feel squeezed by their Charmin — instead of vice versa. For Democrats, the focused attention on this most basic of necessities can prove a potent line of attack.
So it’s a bad sign for the GOP that consumers feel squeezed by their Charmin — instead of vice versa. And for Democrats, the focused attention on this most basic of necessities can prove a potent line of attack on the administration’s economic bungling. Even if the higher prices can’t be directly linked to his specific trade war with Canada, the current uproar has effectively brought home, so to speak, the cost of the Trump administration’s overall policies on tariffs and trade.
The Trump administration, however, has dismissed consumers’ worries as a tempest in a teapot (or a toilet bowl). Referring to the trade war with Canada, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer insisted on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that “there’s no possible way it can really affect U.S. well-being.”
Greer’s dismissive response is unlikely to diminish the political liability the tissue issue could become. By rekindling his trade war with Canada, Trump hasn’t just flushed away the last vestiges of goodwill with our closest ally. He’s wiped away any pretense of concern about Americans’ daily struggles with affordability.
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