Ready or not, help is on the way for North Carolina’s beleaguered furniture manufacturers.

President Donald Trump is turning to his favorite weapon, massive tariffs on foreign goods slapped together with little notice, to revive furniture manufacturing in a state haunted by jobs shipped overseas over the past two decades.

Yet some furniture executives worry that this help from the federal government will do more harm than good to an industry grappling with notoriously thin profit margins, a shortage of skilled workers and whiplash from other tariffs.

Exhibit A: Alex Shuford, CEO of 78-year-old Rock House Farm Furniture, who, in theory, would benefit from these levies.

But like others in the industry, Shuford has mixed feelings about the tariffs and the way Trump’s plan has been rolled out. He appreciates the “admirable” desire to revitalize North Carolina manufacturing, but warns of collateral damage in the interconnected global furniture ecosystem.

“We’ve got to be really careful that the effort to save us doesn’t do more damage than good,” Shuford told CNN.

Rock House runs 11 factories that make furniture domestically, but some of its brands also import furniture from overseas. Roughly 80% of its sales are from furniture made in North Carolina, with the rest imported.

New tariffs of 25% kicked in Tuesday on imported kitchen cabinets, vanities and upholstered wooden furniture. On January 1, levies for upholstered furniture are scheduled to increase to 30% and cabinets and vanities to 50%.

While some furniture companies that make 100% of their furniture in the United States could be helped by Trump’s furniture tariffs, others that import some or all of their products will be hurt.

And Shuford is concerned about unintended pain for the retailers and distribution companies the entire industry relies on to sell furniture.

“Frankly, I’m worried that we’ll have some retailers that decide they can’t make it through,” said Shuford, whose grandfather founded the company. “And then it hurts us all. The whole ecosystem gets damaged.”

‘We’re not going back’

Trump has claimed his furniture tariffs will spark a boom in domestic manufacturing.

In a Truth Social post late last month, Trump said the levies will “make North Carolina, which has completely lost its furniture business to China, and other Countries, GREAT again.”

And Trump has a point. As recently as 1999, North Carolina laid claim to about 80,000 furniture manufacturing jobs.

But the vast majority of those jobs have since vanished.

North Carolina had just 28,000 furniture jobs as of August, the most recent month federal data was available. Apart from the pandemic era, furniture employment is at its lowest level since at least 1990.
While some furniture executives think Trump’s tariffs could help reshore some jobs, they’re skeptical about a dramatic revival — especially in the near-term.

“We’re not going to see the entire industry come back,” Shuford said.

David Johnston, vice president of the Furniture Manufacturers Credit Association, is tapping the brakes on mass reshoring talk, too.

“We’re not going back to the heyday of the 1990s. But we will get more expensive furniture,” Johnston, who grew up just outside High Point, North Carolina’s furniture hub, told CNN in a phone interview.


------------

---------
------
  
Source: edition.cnn.com