Donald Trump has announced a new 50% tariff on kitchen and bathroom cabinets being imported into the US, which he says is in response to other countries “flooding” the market with products.
Trump announced the new tariffs last night on his Truth Social online platform, and said that they will come into effect on October 1. He explained: “The reason for this is the large scale “FLOODING” of these products into the United States by other outside Countries. It is a very unfair practice, but we must protect, for National Security and other reasons, our Manufacturing process”.
In addition, last night the president announced a new 30% levy on upholstered furniture for the same reason. In the same evening, he also announced a new 100% tariff on pharmaceuticals and a 30% levy on heavy trucks.
Trump has yet to confirm whether these tariffs would be lower for nations which have already agreed to trade deals with his administration, including the UK, which currently faces a blanket 10% rate on its exports to the US.
According to The Guardian, Trump’s new crackdown on kitchen cabinets has already had an impact on stocks, with an index tracking Chinese-listed furniture makers having dropped by around 1% this morning.
Trump’s various tariffs announced earlier this year are already said to have boosted furniture prices in the United States. For instance, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, furniture cost 4.7% more last month than it did in August 2024. Although outside of the KBB sector, living room and dining room furniture has also risen by almost 10% over the last year.
Even before these new tariffs were announced, the Association of the German Kitchen Furniture Industry recently said that kitchen imports to the US were down by more than 17% this year, which it blamed on “uncertainties resulting from American tariff policy”. On a similar note, 80% of the association’s kitchen manufacturers said they expected a decline in their US exports as a result of the country’s new tariffs.
Meanwhile, after seeing a slight dip in its sales earlier this year, Masco also said that “new and broad-reaching tariffs” were behind the decline.