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Welcome to around the House with Eric G. Your trusted source for all things home improvement.

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With over 30 years of remodeling experience, certified kitchen designer Eric G. Takes you behind the scenes with expert advice, industry trends and the latest innovations for your home.

It's everything you need to know without the fluff.

It's time for that midweek update.

Now here's your host, Eric G. Welcome.

To the around the House show, the next generation of home improvement.

I'm Eric G. Thanks for joining me today, guys.

This is our midweek update.

This is the show we do in the middle of the week that didn't cover get covered last weekend and of course this next weekend.

And we got a lot to cover today.

We're broadcasting from the war torn region of Portland, Oregon.

Yeah, come on.

I'm trying to be funny.

We're not going to get into politics today because there's way too much of that, no matter what side you're on out there.

And let's be honest, I'm not going to convince any one of you to change your mind.

So that's just a waste of my time and yours.

And that's not what it's about today.

Looks like we're smack dab in the middle of day one of government shutdown.

And I know there's plenty of people that work for the government out there.

They're wondering if they're going to be getting their paychecks and stuff like that.

But I don't know.

Got up this morning, my Internet worked, my power and lights were on.

Everything was going good.

We'll see what happens.

Long term.

This happens every year or two it seems.

And I think how we have to fix that is we just really need to make sure that none of the elected officials get paid and they don't make the money back.

If they're the ones in charge of the budget, they don't get reimbursed.

We might not have this anymore otherwise.

We just got a bunch of grandstanding for both sides.

But that's my take.

So what I want to know we'll talk about today is an important one because this snuck in under all these things out there.

This snuck in under the radar and I want to talk about it because it's going to really affect some things out there.

First off, the White House spells out its new details of the furniture and lumber tariffs.

So the White House released A fact sheet here this last week, basically that said, hey, here's what's going on.

This is going to apply to furniture and lumber imports and will apply to US Trading partners with the UK and European European Union.

Spell that out in.

And Japan set to receive more preferential terms because they already have trade agreements.

So this will impose a 25% tariffs on upholstered furniture imports, which will rise to 30% on January 1, 2026.

Imports of kitchen cabinets and vanities will face a 25% tariff that doubles to 50% on January 1.

So that's where we're at right now.

So let's dive into this.

Now.

I have been following and if you've been following the show for a long time on the radio or the podcast that you're listening right now, we have talked about this whole thing.

This has been a decades long battle between US Manufacturers of kitchen and bathroom vanities and countries like China and things like that, because they had been proven China to be dumping stuff in the US and so there have been a bunch of different tariffs going back and forth with that.

That's nothing new.

Here's what's new.

So on imports of kitchen cabinets here on, I think it's October 14th, I believe is the date that this is going to come into effect.

So in a couple of weeks we're going to see this jump on.

Now here's where this makes a difference.

There are large cabinet companies out there that say they're made in usa, but as of the last time I was looking at them and I was dealing with them, they were importing parts that were cut overseas in China.

So for instance, some of these major cabinet companies, and I'm talking about most of the ones in the home centers, the craft maids, even the Belmonts were doing it for a time.

I don't know if they are now, but I don't want to talk brand specific because they could have changed it and I wouldn't have caught it.

So we're just going to talk about them as a whole.

But generally speaking, that is one of the reasons why they left the Kitchen Cabinet Manufacturers association because the association was pushing for these tariffs because they were sending in raw parts cheaper than these manufacturers could even buy the sheet goods.

So they were dumping them in below cost and that was because the government was subsidizing those.

So what happened is these major manufacturers to keep prices low, started buying cut parts from overseas.

So maybe they were shipping over plywood or particle board, but they were coming back with the little dumb stuff.

The Stretchers, the bottom of the cabinets, the backs of the cabinets, drawer boxes, things like that they were sending overseas to be pre cut for standard size boxes.

Now since they're putting them all together in the US they were still made in usa, but many of those parts were coming from overseas.

And so many people would walk into the home centers and go, wow, this is amazing.

We're buying these cabinets made in USA.

Probably 30% of that cabinet could have been made overseas.

The difference on these tariffs and if you look at the, the sheet that the, that they came out with from the Trump administration, this fact sheet says something interesting and this is where you need to really watch on the stuff.

So this came out here on September 29th and it's called Supporting America's Lumber Industry.

And so we go through this really quickly.

25% global tariff on certain upholstered furniture, which will increase to 30% on January 1.

The proclamation imposes a 25% global tariff on kitchen cabinets and vanities, which will increase to 50% on January 1st.

Now trading partners who negotiate with the US to address the threat of wood imports to the national security, the United States may also be able to secure an alternative to the pending tariff increases.

So they go through the European Union, Japan, uk, people that have agreements, how that's going to be different.

Now what's interesting though is that they name in here not only cabinetry, but cabinetry parts.

And that's where that gets interesting because that's going to hit those manufacturers.

So these guys are going to have to start building that back in here because they're saying, hey, by the way, we're going to, we're going to give you a warning.

First shot is on October, which is now starting here in two weeks and then we're going to see it go up.

So all of a sudden it probably isn't going to make sense with what shipping costs are and everything else to send that over.

So that's going to be huge.

Next up is where it gets interesting too is you know, we've had this huge issue and for all of you in North Carolina, I feel for you.

You have been losing so many of your large furniture manufacturing companies and what they're trying to do is to make these import pieces.

And this is the stuff that you see on all the online websites.

This is the stuff that shows up in the Amazon box that you got to sit there and spend two weeks to put together.

And the couch has 42 parts to put together versus the made in America thing that's already put together.

Those were coming in so cheap as well.

Now they're going to try to balance this out.

So, yes.

Does the American public pay more for these cheap things?

No question.

Will it make those more expensive?

No question.

Will people now start looking and going, wow, my time's worth something.

Maybe they won't be tempted by these couches that last six months and you throw them away and they go in the dumpster.

Yeah.

That have tons of chemicals in them.

That might not be healthy for you.

This is all good stuff.

So let's think more about that.

And yes, this will be more expensive.

Does that money go into the treasury and go help pay down the debt?

Absolutely.

So hopefully what this will do is spark some business here.

And that's just the furniture and cabinetry side.

Now, the 10% global tariff on softwood lumber is huge because many of our lumber comes out of Canada these days and they've been sending in way cheaper than we can do it here in my area here in the Pacific Northwest, many of our sawmills are shuttered because it's been coming in so cheap they can't keep them open here even with rail prices.

I can see rail cars coming in and they are cruising in here.

And because building is so low, we're seeing not a lot of houses being built compared to what we used to see.

That's even more interesting.

So if you measure that in yet, lumber right now is pretty low.

If you look statistically, Tom, on the lumber prices out there as far as the board foot price, so the raw material, are lumber companies marketed up more?

Is there some more markup in there?

Yeah, I think so.

If I look back in, let's say 20.

Let's go back to May of 2018, we were at 624 bucks a thousand board feet.

That's the lumber future prices.

Where were we this morning?

618.

So that's where it is.

Now, if we go back into the 2,020 ones, the peak I think was like 1686 in 2021.

That was nuts.

But right now, if we add 10% to that and we are now pulling out of our natural resources, we have the resources here.

We actually manage our forests pretty good when it comes to lumber is how that goes.

So I'm not worried about that.

We have the resources to do this and to keep those jobs.

In the US Right now, we've been just pushing the jobs coming out of Canada.

They're the ones that have got all these communities with their sawmills going.

And here in the us, Ours have been Shutting down, which means all those small towns outside of the areas like Portland, Seattle, Northern California, get into Idaho, Montana, all of us here on the west coast.

At least all that stuff's been coming out of the north.

So they're trying to balance that out.

Is that going to translate into some bigger prices?

Probably not.

I think it's going to spool up some stuff.

We'll start to see some of those sawmills cruising back up again, but it's not going to really change stuff.

Now it might a little bit if we actually get house building back again and people start building homes again.

But that's probably six months to a year away unless we see some major changes to the interest rates out there.

Because right now, even if the interest rates were down low, many people are living like we all are, paycheck to paycheck out there.

So that's really gotta change.

We gotta have more cash in people's pockets and low enough interest rates where people want to take the risk to go to the next size house.

All right, that's my rant on today's lumber prices, the tariffs, cabinetry, that kind of stuff.

Now let's take a look here real quick and see what we have for our recalls like we do each week, see if there's anything here that is something you should be paying attention to.

Now.

First off, what's interesting is the little warning you get when you jump onto the Consumer Product Safety Commission site.

It says CPS see activities during a lapse on appropriations.

During the lapse in federal appropriations, CPSC will continue its critical work to protect the public from imminent threats.

Basically saying, hey, we're not going to be doing any of our big meetings, but we're still going to be watching.

So they still have a skeleton staff working on product recalls and warnings, which probably isn't that much of a skeleton, but it's an interesting little warning.

What I'm looking at here, we got some blinds here, about 133,000 of them.

Pursu lux home.com.

there's some zebra blinds, entanglement hazards off Amazon.

I'm sure they'll notify you there because they know exactly who bought those.

Auto Easy brands.

Bamboo shades, same thing.

This is where you start to see where stuff comes from and who, what brands are related.

When you see the same recalls for the same things.

And really, really not too much on here.

Sunbeam recalls more than a million Oster French door countertop ovens.

Due to a burn hazard, the doors can unexpectedly close.

There's about 1.3 million of those.

Be careful.

And the rest of that stuff is stuff from last week.

So really there's not a lot on there this week that is out there for you.

So if you've got one of those, you can always find out more at cpsc.

All right, guys, I gotta get back at it today.

I've got a few more things.

Great news.

I did get an offer on the house.

So we'll see if we make it through that inspection period.

Gonna be curious to see how that comes out.

I know all those things about my house, but it's always interesting to see to what the inspector says.

Will this be a showdown or is this going to be an easy skate?

Time will tell.

Thanks for tuning in to around the House.

We'll see you on Saturday with an all brand new show.

And yeah, Dudley's back for more with us on Saturday.

Tune in.

We'll see you soon.

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