Donald Trump announces 30 per cent tariff on upholstered furniture
US president Donald Trump has announced that there will be a 30 per cent tariff on upholstered furniture being imported to the USA from the start of October.
Trump announced the furniture tariffs, alongside a 50 per cent tariff on kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities in a post on Trump Social yesterday evening.
"We will be imposing a 50% Tariff on all kitchen cabinets, bathroom vanities, and associated products, starting October 1st, 2025," he wrote in the post.
"Additionally, we will be charging a 30% tariff on upholstered furniture."
Products "flooding" into USA
The tariffs are set to be introduced following a "tariff investigation", which was announced last month with the aim of bringing furniture businesses back to states such as North Carolina.
According to Trump, the tariffs have been created to stop the "flooding" of furniture into the USA from other countries.
"The reason for this is the large scale 'flooding' of these products into the United States by other outside countries," he wrote.
"It is a very unfair practice, but we must protect, for national security and other reasons, our manufacturing process."
Currently, the US imports more than $20 billion of furniture each year, with the majority coming from East Asia.
The new tariffs have not officially been confirmed by the White House, and it is unclear if these new tariffs would be in addition to those already introduced by Trump's administration on imports from many countries.
It is also unclear what the impact of the tariffs will be, but shares in US furniture retailers fell sharply following the news.
"Wayfair Inc, Restoration Hardware and Williams-Sonoma Inc were trading lower between 2.6 per cent to 4.4 per cent in pre-market trade," reported Yahoo! Finance.
"Tariffs are impacting our business"
Also in response to the news, Swedish furniture giant IKEA told the BBC that the furniture tariffs will make doing business "more difficult".
"The tariffs are impacting our business similarly to other companies, and we are closely monitoring the evolving situation," it said.
Furniture makers and retailers have been waiting for news of the tariffs since the investigation was announced last month. And earlier in the year, designers visiting the annual Milan Design Week told Dezeen that the effects of tariffs on the design industry could be "brutal".
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