Paul Wellborn, owner of Wellborn Cabinet, recognized the Chinese man from a recent visit to Wellborn’s Alabama factory as a potential customer. . Wilburn faced off against the rival.
“He just laughed and said, ‘We sell Gucci bags. We make these things and no one can stop it,'” Welborn recalled.
Welborn said the encounter gave him “motivation” to “fight for justice.” He paid about $14,000 in legal fees to ensure the man stopped using Welburn’s brochures. Then nearly 15 years later, when he realized his business was at risk from Chinese cabinet dumping, he sought tariffs to protect himself.
It was then that he met former President Donald Trump. He met with Trump in Milwaukee in 2017 to discuss those challenges.
During the 2024 election season, Trump repeatedly mentioned the cabinet industry as a beneficiary of the tariffs implemented during his first term.
The Republican presidential candidate said that if re-elected, he would impose a 10% tariff on all imports and a 60% tariff on imports from China.
Tariffs have been a controversial topic in this election.
Democratic presidential candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris called the tariffs a “Trump sales tax.” However, the Biden-Harris administration retained all of the tariffs Trump had imposed on more than $300 billion worth of Chinese goods (about three-quarters of total U.S. imports from China) and raised $18 billion worth of Chinese imports Tax rates on goods such as electric cars, chips and solar panels.
When U.S. President Joe Biden announced the new rates in May, he said higher tariffs would protect U.S. industries from “falling prices and stunted development caused by overcapacity driven by China’s policies.”
At the end of October, during the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen reiterated concerns about China’s industrial overcapacity. She said China has yet to solve the fundamental problems she highlighted during a visit to Beijing in April – that it produces more than domestic demand and dumps cheap products around the world.
Voters, meanwhile, have mixed views.
An NBC poll in early October found that just over a third of voters supported widespread tariffs, while a Reuters/Ipsos poll in mid-September found that 56% of voters supported Trump’s tariff proposals.
The Peterson Institute for International Economics estimates that Trump’s tariff plan will cost the average American household $2,600 a year. The Yale Budget Lab believes the cost will be between $1,900 and $7,600 per year.
Despite criticism, Trump still insists on imposing tariffs on Chinese goods.
Trump said at the Economic Club of Chicago on October 15: “The most beautiful word in the dictionary is tariff. This is my favorite word.”
At the same event, he said, he met a cabinet maker who told him, “Sir, kitchen cabinets made in China and Korea cost a third of what I cost… I Can’t compete.”
Years later, the same person told him: “You saved my company with the tariffs and saved thousands of jobs. My company is doing great now.”
Welborn thought Trump was referring to him. Although difficult to verify, his statement certainly fits the bill.
After first facing a crisis in 2005, Ashland, Ala.-based Wilborn Cabinet Co. weathered the Great Recession from late 2007 to mid-2009 – when many American households couldn’t afford it – by offering a wide range of products. Mortgage.
However, when the market began to recover, business did not grow; instead, headcount shrank from 2,000 to 1,200 employees between 2007 and 2020, a 40% drop.
The simple design of Shaker-style cabinets allowed Chinese manufacturers to capture the market by selling ready-to-install (RTA) products. U.S. distributors import RTA parts, assemble them and sell them domestically. These prices are typically 20% to 60% lower than similar products made in the United States.
By 2018, China had occupied more than 40% of the market share. That year, more than $4 billion worth of cabinets were imported from China in a $10 billion cabinet industry.
That same year, Welburn spoke with Republican Senator Richard Craig Shelby of Alabama, who suggested he file a lawsuit. Welborn said Shelby said many people are unhappy with China.
In March 2019, Wilborn Cabinets became a founding member of the American Kitchen Cabinet Alliance, a non-profit organization that submitted a petition to the U.S. Department of Commerce. A year later, the Commerce Department concluded that Chinese cabinets were sold in the United States for “less than fair value.” Meanwhile, the International Trade Commission found that Chinese government-subsidized cabinet imports harmed the U.S. domestic cabinet industry.
As a result, Chinese cabinet importers had to pay tariffs of up to 300%. Welborn said he visited Washington nearly every week during the year-long struggle, and other cabinet companies did the same.
“I was really happy when we won the lawsuit,” he said.
“This helps all American families. It’s comforting to me because all the families here still have jobs. They’re all our friends and family.”
He recalled the Chinese man at the 2005 trade show who said, “If you feel you are fighting for justice, you will never give up.” “You will never give up.”
Welborn said he was not against the Chinese, but he was against unfair competition promoted by the regime. Chinese products are cheap and good-looking, but they don’t last long, he said.
He pointed to the chair he had been sitting in in the conference room at the company’s headquarters. It was 50 years old and just needed a new cover.
In October this year, he celebrated his 80th birthday. “This is my life, my family is here,” he said of the cabinet business he and his brother built from scratch, “and I really love it. I love walking over and watching the logs go into our sawmill. ” and pay attention to the entire process.
Yellen said at the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Washington on October 22 that widespread tariffs would lead to higher domestic prices and affect the competitiveness of U.S. companies in exporting goods.
On October 17, she also told members of the Committee on Foreign Relations that “comprehensive, untargeted tariffs will increase the cost of living for American families and weaken the competitiveness of our businesses,” and called general tariffs “extremely wrong.”
Economists generally believe that tariffs will lead to higher prices, and the cost of tariffs is usually borne by U.S. importers and consumers. The disagreement among them is whether Trump’s tariffs will cause inflation.
Peter Morici, the former director of the U.S. International Trade Commission’s Office of Economics, told the media that he does not believe Trump’s tariff plan will increase inflation because the 2018 and 2019 taxes did not trigger inflation and Trump There is an option to phase in the import tax over four years.
In June, 16 Nobel laureates in economics signed an open letter saying Trump’s economic plans would drive up inflation, but experts did not specify the impact of tariffs.
Others see Trump’s tariff plan as a negotiating tool for a trade deal similar to the Phase One trade deal signed in 2020.
A 2023 study by the U.S. International Trade Commission reviewed the impact of Section 301 tariffs from 2018 to 2021.
Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 authorizes the President of the United States to impose tariffs to combat unfair trade practices or violations of trade agreements. The committee estimated that the tariffs reduced U.S. imports from China by 13% each of those four years. The study also found that domestic product prices in industries affected by the tariffs increased by 0.2% and production increased by 0.4%.
“Just like in 2016, Wall Street and so-called experts are predicting that Trump’s policies will lead to growth,” Brian Hughes, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, wrote in an email to The Epoch Times. slowdown and rising inflation.”
“The media took these forecasts lightly, but the record was never corrected when actual growth and job growth far exceeded these views.”
Tariff costs may be necessary from a national security perspective.
On October 23, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said in a speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington that the imposition of tariffs is necessary to prevent China from dumping state-subsidized excess production capacity into the global market. “Such behavior will bankrupt global manufacturers and strangle supply chains.”
According to the Kitchen Cabinet Manufacturers Association, the tariffs are good for the cabinet industry. Betsy Natz, the group’s chief executive, said importers stockpiling Chinese imports before the 2020 tariffs take effect “will only delay the effectiveness of the tax cuts by a few months.”
“Tariffs are now working to exclude unfairly traded Chinese cabinet imports from the U.S. market.”
In 2018, U.S. monthly imports from China reached a peak of US$160 million, while current imports are only US$2 million.
Cheap imports could wipe out domestic industries and ultimately lead to higher prices in markets dominated by foreign companies, she said.
In 2019 and 2020, the main opponent of cabinet tariffs was the American Association of Cabinet Distributors (ACCD), which represents importers. In a February 2020 statement, ACCD member Randy Goldstein, CEO of Kitchen Cabinet Distributors, accused pro-tariff groups of “exploiting the trade scare against China” and “trying to eliminate traditional A small but important segment of the market supplied by China”.
In July, the U.S. Commerce Department ruled that wooden cabinets, vanities and parts imported from Malaysia and Vietnam would be subject to the same Chinese tariffs. The two cabinet makers associations filed suit against the Commerce Department to close a loophole that allowed Chinese exporters to avoid tariffs by shipping from the two countries.
Current tariffs are due to undergo a routine five-year review next year. The review will determine whether to lift the tariffs or keep them in place for another five years. “We firmly believe that the current tariffs need to remain in place,” Nutz said.