Tariffs unlikely to bring back furniture manufacturing jobs, association CEO says

An advocate for the home furnishings industry says tariffs by the Trump administration are unlikely to bring factory jobs back to North Carolina.

Furniture is a global industry, but that hasn’t always been the case. In the 1990s, North Carolina companies largely had their production and supply chains within the country, says Shannon Williams, CEO of the High Point-based Home Furnishings Association.

Williams says the tariffs by the administration aren’t likely to bring those production and supply chains back, in part because there’s not a demand for factory jobs or a skilled workforce to fill them.

“There’s not many, if any, manufacturers talking about bringing manufacturing back here," she says. "I’ve heard of one from Canada moving to the U.S., but I’m not hearing U.S. companies that are using global strategy to build and manufacture products moving back to the U.S."

Williams says it would take years to rehome the industry, and by that time, a lot of the manufacturing could be done through AI, not by humans.

The tariff measures have stoked fears of high prices, and Williams sees a recession as almost inevitable.

“I talked to some retailers who are just extremely cautious with cash and are prepared to weather out that dynamic," she says. "There are some that have reserved funds for this, some that are going to innovate through this and capitalize and there’s going to be others that go out of business and can’t withstand it.”

Williams says the association recently met with GOP members of the powerful U.S. House Ways and Means Committee. She says the members were receptive to their concerns and asked for more information from the group.