A California furniture and hardware company is planning to expand its manufacturing in the United States thanks to President Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports.
Restoration Hardware, known simply as “RH,” offers luxury furnishing collections from dining room tables to home decor with about 35 percent of its products being made in China last fiscal year. For Fiscal Year 2019, RH executives said that about 25 to 30 percent of its products will be manufactured in China.
Trump’s recent hiking of tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports to 25 percent, though, has RH executives planning to expand their manufacturing base in the U.S. That expansion will mean less and less production in China.
In the company’s latest financial report, executives said:
Regarding China tariffs, we have renegotiated product costs and selectively raised prices to mitigate the impact of the increase from 10 to 25 percent. We are also moving certain production and new product development out of China, plus exploring new partnerships and expanding our own manufacturing facilities in the United States. Long term, we do not believe the current trade climate will impair our ability to achieve our stated financial goals and the expected impact from the increased tariffs is embedded in our guidance for the year. [Emphasis added]
As Breitbart News’s John Carney noted, the prices of goods imported to the U.S. have fallen even as tariffs on China have increased. Specifically, prices for Chinese imports fell 0.1 percent last month and are down 1.4 percent compared to a year ago, indicating that China is absorbing the bulk of tariff costs.
“Tariffs are implemented to counter unfair trading practices and to stimulate domestic production,” Jeff Ferry, chief economist for the Coalition for a Prosperous America, said in a statement. “With manufacturers adding jobs, and consumers not facing additional costs, it’s clear they are working. It’s troubling to see media coverage of misleading estimates of higher costs and prices, when actual price data is freely available.”
A recent Harvard/Harris Poll found that nearly 8-in-10 Republican voters, and a majority of 53 percent of all U.S. voters, support the increase of tariffs on Chinese imports to protect American jobs and U.S. industries.
Decades of free trade have spurred mass layoffs, unemployment, and offshoring of high-paying American jobs while surging trade deficits. Since China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO), the U.S. trade deficit with China has eliminated at least 3.5 million American jobs from the American economy. Millions of American workers in all 50 states have been displaced from their jobs, which have been lost due to U.S.-China trade relations.
American manufacturing is vital to the U.S. economy, as every one manufacturing job supports an additional 7.4 American jobs in other industries. Decades of free trade, with deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), have eliminated nearly five million manufacturing jobs from the American economy and resulted in the closure of about 50,000 manufacturing plants.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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