HICKORY, NC
—
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.”
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.
The biggest obstacle to mass reshoring is a lack of American skilled workers.
“There were generations of skilled folks that made furniture. There isn’t mass talent here anymore. People don’t want to do the job,” said Johnston.
Rock House Farm Furniture has 50 to 75 job openings for upholsters, seamstresses, technicians and woodworkers, but Shuford said a lack of skilled crafts people means it will take a long time to fill those roles.
“We don’t need months or quarters. We need years and maybe even decades to bring back something that was so difficult to create in the first place,” he said.
That’s why Shuford is urging the Trump administration to think beyond the stick of tariffs and focus on carrots like skills training programs for workers. While furniture manufacturers do work with local community colleges to train workers, he said there aren’t enough young people choosing this path. And for those that do, it can take years to train.
Today’s furniture industry instead relies on a global talent pool, with places like the Philippines and Indonesia boasting the skilled workforce that North Carolina once had.
Shuford said that current actions risk not only failing to return furniture jobs en masse to the United States, but damaging the industry’s reputation overseas to the point that young people in Asia opt to work in call centers and electronics instead.
Furniture executives warn that importers will be hit hard by the furniture tariffs on top of existing tariffs.
Jofran, a Massachusetts-based company that imports 100% of its products, has already been slammed by Trump’s steel tariffs and country-specific tariffs on key sources of manufacturing like Vietnam, Indonesia and India.
The company has been forced to jack up prices and lay off workers. It has let go of about 20% of its workforce — its biggest layoffs since the 2008 financial crisis.
John Miranda, executive vice president at Jofran, is frustrated by rhetoric that has vilified importers like his.
“We’re Americans. We are as American as someone building it in a factory. We own our own homes and pay our taxes,” Miranda told CNN in a phone interview. “We are not an enemy of the state, but we’re treated as one because we don’t do the actual building of furniture here.”
Miranda notes that the entire furniture ecosystem involves American citizens who could be hurt by tariffs — everyone from the longshoremen at the ports where imports arrive, to the truck drivers, warehouse workers and store employees.
“Shotgun blast tariffs don’t work. They just spray everywhere,” Miranda said.
One thing furniture tariffs will do, executives say, is add to the cost of living.
Imported furniture is likely to get more expensive. But prices could also rise for domestic items if US manufacturers’ labor costs rise in order to attract the necessary workers to produce more in America.
The problem is that the profit margins in the furniture industry are very narrow.
“You can’t eat all of this and stay in business. It’s got to give somewhere,” Caroline Hipple, a furniture industry consultant and former CEO, told CNN. “Someone is paying for it — and I guarantee you it’s the damn customer. That’s who the biggest losers will be. And that’s going to hurt demand, so we all suffer.”
Furniture prices have already been rising sharply.
In August, furniture and bedding prices were up 4.7% year-over-year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s the biggest 12-month increase since December 2022.
In particular, living room, kitchen and dining room furniture prices were up 9.5%, the most since November 2022.
“It’s going to take decades to bring the furniture industry back,” Hipple said. “Is the American consumer willing to make that sacrifice?”
