Daily News
From Home Furnishing Business
When Tariffs Fly All Kinds of Things Hit the Fan
April 3,
2025 by Karen Parrish in Business Strategy, Industry 
OUR OPINION
In a follow up to both the RH Quarter Four Results and the "Liberation Day" reciprocal tariffs, a brief article was published on the Wall Street Journal.
The CEO of RH Gary Friedman happened to be on a call on Wednesday afternoon with analysts on a completely different topic, concerning RH clearance strategy and the potential of the housing market slowing down.
In the letter to the shareholders as part of the Q4 report, Friedman referenced the anticipated outcome of the impact of the tariffs, as such:
"As communicated last quarter, we do not expect a negative impact to results related to previously announced increased tariffs on products from China, Canada or Mexico. As it relates to reciprocal and other tariffs that will be announced today, as we’ve done with prior tariffs, we will be working with our manufacturing partners to mitigate the impact to both our margins and costs to our customers."
Then, he asked colleagues to get a “live read” of his business and checked how the company’s stock was doing. And things took a quick turn...
“Oh really? Oh, shit, OK,” Friedman said. “It got hit when I think the tariff came out and everybody can see in our 10-K where we’re sourcing from so it’s not a secret.”
According to the statistics in the Wall Street Journal, at the time shares of RH were down 41% in Thursday’s trading. As reported, 72% of its products were sourced from Asia in 2024, with 35% from Vietnam and 23% from China.
In 2024, there were over 3,700 household furniture manufacturing businesses in the United states, down 1.5% from 2023. The there are over 126,000 U.S. furniture importers who import furniture from 180+ countries from 159,800+ suppliers worldwide. As per US Shipment data for 2024, there were almost 4.6 million import shipments into the United States.
China and Vietnam were the major exporters to the U.S. with China's exports totaling $9.4 billion in 2023 (down almost 30% from 2022) and Vietnam exported $8.6 billion (down almost 20%.
It is a safe bet that there are more companies that will be impacted by the universal tariffs. Perhaps Mr. Friedman said it best.