Steve Greenspawn
Appearances
The Journal.
Trump’s Tariffs Force a New Era in Global Trade
Dismay, anger, disbelief, sadness, scratch in my head.
The Journal.
Trump’s Tariffs Force a New Era in Global Trade
And we cannot produce our products in the U.S. These are low-cost products that require so much labor and so many inputs and so many different materials. The U.S. does not have the infrastructure in order to produce these low-cost products.
The Journal.
Trump’s Tariffs Force a New Era in Global Trade
Oh, I can't give you a quantifiable number, but it wouldn't surprise me if it's millions of dollars. This is tooling. This is time and resources. This is working with our partners to buy land and build buildings and put in tooling and machinery and so much. You know, had we known, of course, that the tariffs were coming, we would have reconsidered.
The Journal.
Trump’s Tariffs Force a New Era in Global Trade
It just seems wrong that these companies, including our company, made these monstrous investments in moving things to Vietnam and other countries that are on the list. And now it's for naught. It's for waste. It's out the window.
The Journal.
Trump’s Tariffs Force a New Era in Global Trade
Of course. We can't absorb this type of thing. So, yes, it's going to be passed along. We'll work with our customers, and we'll take a hit, and the customers will take a hit, and the consumers will take a hit, and we'll get it worked out.
The Journal.
Trump’s Tariffs Force a New Era in Global Trade
There's no question demand is going to be down. It reaches a point where the simple supply and demand is you've got X number of consumers, they're going to be willing to pay $20 for a drying rack. As soon as you make the price $30, it's going to be significantly less.
The Journal.
Trump’s Tariffs Force a New Era in Global Trade
At a certain point, instead of buying a drying rack, consumers are going to say, you know what, I've got a chair or a Peloton or whatever they have lying around and they're not going to buy a drying rack.
The Journal.
Trump’s Tariffs Force a New Era in Global Trade
Yeah, of course. We're going to have to reduce expenses, whether it's staff or cutting other areas. You know, in a company like ours, the staff is certainly the largest expense.
The Journal.
Trump’s Tariffs Force a New Era in Global Trade
Not for our categories, not for household goods, not for these types of products. There are no alternatives for our types of products to be made in the U.S. or made in countries that don't have these massive tariffs.
The Journal.
Trump’s Tariffs Force a New Era in Global Trade
If consumers want to buy our type of products, the coat hangers, the trash bins, the drying racks, the shelving units, the laundry hampers going forward with these tariffs, they're going to pay a much, much higher price or they're not going to buy them.
The Journal.
Trump’s Tariffs Force a New Era in Global Trade
I don't know if regret is the right term. Obviously, had we known about this, we would not have made these decisions. So I guess regret might be the right term. At the time that we made the decisions, I feel like they were the right decisions with the information that we had.
The Journal.
Trump’s Tariffs Force a New Era in Global Trade
Nothing is going to happen quickly, I'll say that. This was hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars invested in order to get to the point where we could produce the products in Vietnam. And who's to say if we move it to Cambodia or Thailand or pick any country that we're not going to be hit with tariffs at that point?
The Journal.
Trump’s Tariffs Force a New Era in Global Trade
I mean, it just, it throws a loop into how we can make a long-term investment.
The Journal.
Trump’s Tariffs Force a New Era in Global Trade
Of course, always. But if demand due to these higher tariffs continues to go down, there's no question that that's certainly something that you have to explore. You know, and it's sad. You know, it's a good company doing good things. And this is something that's completely out of our control. And that's what makes it even more frustrating.