Workers move lumber at the Hampton Lumber Mill in Darrington, Washington. On Monday, President Donald Trump ordered a 10% tariff on softwood lumber and timber and a 25% tariff on cabinets and furniture to prevent the “flooding” of products into the United States by other countries. File Photo by Jim Bryant/UPI | License Photo
President Donald Trump ordered new tariffs Monday on imported lumber, cabinets and furniture that could add to rising construction costs, as the administration targets Chinese manufacturers.
Trump said the United States would begin charging a 25% tariff on kitchen cabinets, vanities and upholstered furniture starting Oct. 14. He also announced a 10% tariff on softwood lumber and timber used in building materials, according to a proclamation released by the White House.
The tariffs announced Monday will go up to 30% for cabinets and 50% for furniture after the first of the year, Trump added.
“In order to make North Carolina, which has completely lost its furniture business to China and other countries, GREAT again, I will be imposing substantial tariffs on any country that does not make its furniture in the United States,” Trump wrote Monday in a post on Truth Social.
Last month, during a cabinet meeting, Trump blamed the decline in U.S. furniture manufacturing on other countries.
“That furniture business was stolen from us by others, not only China,” Trump said during the August meeting. “All of a sudden, you’re ordering furniture from China,” the world’s largest furniture producer.
“The reason for this is the large scale ‘FLOODING’ of these products into the United States by other outside countries,” Trump added Thursday in a post on Truth Social. “It is a very unfair practice, but we must protect, for national security and other reasons, our manufacturing process.”
Lumber, cabinet and furniture tariffs fall under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act, which allows the president to impose tariffs on goods in the interest of national security. Those are different from the reciprocal tariffs Trump has imposed on specific countries to correct trade imbalances.
The tariffs will “strengthen supply chains, bolster industrial resilience, create high-quality jobs and increase domestic capacity utilization for wood products,” Trump said.
