How tariffs will affect the price (or even the size!) of your next sofa

For shoppers, choosing a couch can feel daunting. What color? Size? Fabric? Style? Price?! What shoppers don’t see is the equally complex web of questions on the other side of that couch. Where does it get made, who makes it, and out of what? And all of those answers can be upended by any number of factors, including, of course, economic policies like tariffs.

President Donald Trump’s ever-changing tariff plan currently stands to impose taxes on many of the world’s major furniture manufacturers, making price increases for consumers very likely. But even companies that build furniture in the United States (a smaller but significant part of the market) are not immune from aftershocks. Most rely on varying amounts of raw materials — nuts and bolts, fabric, blades for cutting said fabric, recliner mechanisms, springs — made elsewhere; they also worry that frightened customers might decide now is not the time to buy a new couch.

A look inside the furniture industry offers some advice for consumers — and a bit of a reality check about domestic manufacturing.

There’s a strong chance that much of the furniture in your home was manufactured abroad and then imported to the United States, especially if you used an Allen wrench to put it together yourself or if you were amazed at how inexpensive it was.

More than half of the furniture that American consumers purchase is imported. Vietnam and China are the largest exporters of furniture to the United States, especially when it comes to what the industry calls “case goods” — a range of furnishings for bedrooms, offices, dining rooms, and other pieces for storing items rather than people.

“The reality is that there’s not a lot of American case goods manufacturing left,” says Ben Copeland, the director of sales and marketing at Copeland Furniture, in Bradford, Vt., which manufactures domestically and has annual sales in the lower-eight figures. (The U.S. furniture sales annually are between $120 billion and $125 billion, according to trade publication Furniture Today.)

Vietnam started becoming a major player in the furniture market after the United States implemented antidumping measures on China and its furniture industry in 2004, a move designed at the time to strengthen U.S. manufacturers. Instead, many companies shifted their focus to Vietnam. Tariffs on China during the first Trump administration further solidified Vietnam’s stronghold.

This current tariff blitz has come with a large helping of whiplash for people in the furniture business. While Trump’s plan initially included a 46% tariff on Vietnam, among the highest, the latest iteration has put a pause on these bigger numbers and instead places a 10% tariff on goods from all 75 nations aside from China. China, meanwhile, willsee a 145% tariff on imported goods.

Trump has said tariffs will bring manufacturing back to the United States. There is a smaller but significant slice of furniture manufactured domestically, but those in the business will tell you they still rely on global suppliers.

Copeland Furniture, which makes furniture primarily with U.S.-grown hardwoods, is mostly insulated from the tariffs. However, the company globally sources some of its key components — like the hardware that brings it all together (such as nuts, bolts, and fasteners), as well as glass table tops and textiles. Because those are such a small sliver of the company’s input for each product, the tariffs are “not going to have a huge effect for us,” Copeland says. If more of the furniture depended on products made abroad, “then there would be no way to escape a significant price increase.”

Upholstered furniture, such as couches and chairs, has more of a manufacturing presence in the United States. However, those items require more raw materials that are made internationally.

Norwalk Furniture Co. manufactures upholstered goods in its Norwalk, Ohio, factory. “We try to be hyper local with what we source,” says Tim Newlin, CEO of the company. “But there are a number of components that … will be impacted,” including recliner mechanisms, springs, and fabrics.

While Norwalk buys from nearly all of the domestic mills that make fabrics and leathers, “the majority of fabrics are global,” Newlin says. “Even us trying to buy as much from the U.S. as we can, say 60% of the fabrics that cover our furniture and leathers come from all over the world,” including countries such as China, Vietnam, Italy, Turkey, and India.

But companies like Copeland and Norwalk are just a slice of a much larger pie.

Michelle Hardy is the owner of Furnish, a store in Raleigh, N.C., that sells furniture manufactured in the United States. Working with sustainable companies that manufacture domestically is important to her on a personal level and as a key thread in her business’ story, “but you just can’t get away from the fact that there are gonna be pieces that you have to source from outside of the United States,” she says. A lot of the smaller items in her showroom, such as rugs, lights, and decorations for shelves, come from abroad.

“Should the tariffs remain in place, there’s absolutely no question that the price of furniture will go up,” says Bill McLoughlin, editor in chief of the trade publication Furniture Today. Even before the tariffs took effect, price increase letters from suppliers to manufacturers and from manufacturers to retailers and interior designers were already sent out.

Hardy says she received notice from about half of her main manufacturers about price increases. “They haven’t said how much they’re increasing and they’re also not saying specifically it’s because of the tariffs,” she says, but she suspects it is related.

What a price increase looks like isn’t necessarily as clear cut as, say, a 10% tariff on a country means a 10% across-the-board increase in furniture imported from that country. “Nothing ever works that way,” McLoughlin says.

“Every step of the supply chain will be asked to eat a piece of the increase,” he says. “So the original factory will be asked by its customers to work out some pricing, some work-around. Then the company that imports it will be asked by its retailers to eat a piece of that. The retailers typically will eat a piece before they pass it on to the consumer.”

Copeland Furniture has been through this process before. “The first step anytime tariffs are issued, and this happened in 2017 as well, we go and negotiate with the suppliers to see if they will meet us in the middle,” Copeland says. “Then we take a bit of a haircut in our own margins on top of things, so possibly and hopefully … any increases would be maybe in line with kind of a predictable regular price increase rather than a drastic one.”

Norwalk has been getting notifications from suppliers about price changes for longer than just the past couple weeks, Newlin says — Trump began announcing tariffs on countries at the end of January. When a fabric’s price changes from the supplier, that offering gets moved into a different price grade for the consumer.

Luckily for Norwalk, its upholstered furniture is custom ordered. “Then the consumer has to navigate and decide whether if they love it, they’ll pay for it, or if there’s another option less, they’ll choose,” he says. “It’s not as disruptive as someone who sells kind of finished goods, where they’ve already got some made, they’ve got a lot in play at a price. The whole thing’s got to go up in price.”

Indeed, the higher-end furniture isn’t going to see as much fluctuation in pricing as the items with a lower price point, says Shannon Williams, the CEO of the Home Furnishings Association. Many pieces made with a lot of craftsmanship have already been using domestic products and labor. It’s the cheap goods that come over on container ships from China that will be impacted.

“What’s going to change for the consumer really depends … on where your retailer is buying your product. Some are still purchasing in China, some of them are working with U.S. companies that get all of the pieces individually from Vietnam, but then assemble here in the U.S. So there’s gonna be a different fluctuation of costs.”

McLoughlin doesn’t believe a 10% tariff on any one country is sufficient enough to dramatically change behavior across an industry or entirely change where and how furniture makers acquire their raw and built materials. It won’t cause consumers’ jaws to drop in response to price changes. “Most retailers and manufacturers and factories can work within their existing operations to mitigate a 10% increase,” he says.

But there could be other effects. Companies may refigure products or swap out for less pricey materials. Imagine so-called “shrinkflation,” when manufacturers provide less of everyday household items than before at the same price point, hitting the furniture market. “A product that was 46 inches maybe now gets moved to 44,” McLoughlin says.

After the industry boom during the pandemic, when customers saw long lag times, many furniture companies now have a glut of supply.

“There’s a lot of retailers that have excess inventory right now, because sales have been light, that are ready to sell off what they have,” Williams says. She believes that all of this backlog will prevent an immediate price hike on some furniture items.

But Newlin is worried that broader consumer uncertainty might make people wary about investing in furniture right now. If necessities like groceries cost more, for instance, that might cause people to rearrange their budget and reconsider buying a new recliner.

Hardy is already seeing that happen. “We had a pretty great first quarter, but second quarter, everyone’s just put a hard stop on buying things,” she says. “I feel like I’m just sort of holding on and closing my eyes and hoping for the best, which is just not a great business strategy.”