{"id":93321,"date":"2025-09-09T05:49:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T05:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=93321"},"modified":"2025-09-09T05:49:00","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T05:49:00","slug":"the-us-factory-spending-100000-a-month-more-due-to-tariffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=93321","title":{"rendered":"The US factory spending $100,000 a month more due to tariffs"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>5 Minute, 45 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>
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In a corner of a cavernous 1890s factory in southern Massachusetts, 15 people are bent over sewing machines, churning out speciality, hospital-grade neonatal gear.<\/p>\n

They are all that remain of what was once a much bigger manufacturing operation, most of which the Teixeira family shut down in 1990, reinventing their business as a largely warehousing and distribution business.<\/p>\n

Since US President Donald Trump started rolling out sweeping tariffs, the Teixeiras have been fielding more inquiries from companies newly interested in their US-based sewing services.<\/p>\n

But they have turned down those offers, deterred by the difficulty of hiring in the midst of an immigration crackdown and doubts that the demand will be sustained.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s just one of the many indications that achieving the manufacturing revival promised by the president is likely to be far more difficult than the White House has claimed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just not going to happen,\u201d said Frank Teixeira, who joined the family business in the 1970s and oversaw its dismantling and reinvention as Accurate Services Inc.<\/p>\n

\u201cTariffs are a bad policy and eventually are going to come home to haunt us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump campaigned for the presidency on the promise of a better economy, engineered in part by tariffs that he said would lower costs and usher in a new golden age.<\/p>\n

The message proved to resonate with voters, helping the campaign make unexpected inroads in working-class areas long considered Democratic strongholds.<\/p>\n

That includes the Teixeiras\u2019 base of Fall River, a former textile manufacturing hub, where Trump\u2019s win marked the first in the city by a Republican presidential candidate in roughly a century.<\/p>\n

But his plans were widely panned by experts, who warned that the tariffs, which are a tax on imports, would instead raise prices for American businesses and consumers and slow growth, with particular risks for manufacturers, who often rely on imported supplies.<\/p>\n

Now, nearly nine months into the president\u2019s term as the tariffs take hold, the gulf between Trump\u2019s rhetoric, which boasts of investments pouring into the country, and the reality on the ground in places like Fall River, is starting to show.<\/p>\n

US manufacturer Matouk relies on imported cloth and other materials to make high-end sheets, quilts and towels<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Employment growth in the US\u00a0has slowed precipitously this year, including in manufacturing. After expanding after the pandemic, payrolls at manufacturing firms have shrunk this year, shedding 12,000 jobs last month alone.<\/p>\n

Business surveys indicate that activity in the sector is in contraction.<\/p>\n

Last month, 71% of manufacturers questioned by the Dallas branch of the Federal Reserve said the tariffs \u2013 which range from 10% to 50% on most imports \u2013 had already had a negative impact on their business, raising the cost of resources and hurting profits.<\/p>\n

At Matouk, a maker of high-end bedding up the road from the Teixeiras\u2019, boss George Matouk said that between April and August tariffs had already added more than $100,000 (\u00a374,000) a month in costs, as they hit supplies like cotton fabric from India and Portugal and down from Liechtenstein.<\/p>\n

George Matouk said he was seeing no benefits from the tariffs<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Founded by his grandfather in 1929, the company has grown to employ about 300 people in recent years \u2013 a point of pride for Mr Matouk, who faced naysayers when he returned as the third generation to join the family business after graduating from Columbia Business School in the late 1990s.<\/p>\n

But the sudden tariff expense has forced the firm to cut investments in things such as new equipment and spending on discretionary items like marketing.<\/p>\n

Despite the made-in-America distinction of many of his products, Mr Matouk said he expected no benefits from the tariffs because higher costs were pushing him to raise prices, a move likely to weigh on sales.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause the materials are subject to tariffs just like everything else, the benefits are not there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mr Matouk called the current challenges faced by his firm \u201cdemoralising in a new way\u201d, since they have been inflicted deliberately by government policy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve done all of the things we were supposed to do to invest in the industrial base of the United States when no one else was willing to do it, and it\u2019s just really frustrating that now we\u2019re being penalised,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Kim and Mike van der Sleesen, owners of Vanson Leathers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Studies on the impact of the more limited tariffs imposed by Trump during his first term on manufacturers in the US have found that small job gains in protected industries, like steel, were more than offset by losses at other firms that were dependent on parts.<\/p>\n

But Mike van der Sleesen, who runs motorcycle jacket business Vanson Leathers, said he thought the changes this year had been so disruptive that it was premature to make predictions.<\/p>\n

Mr van der Sleesen, who voted for Trump last year, is no fan of the president\u2019s tariffs, which have driven up his costs some 15% this year.<\/p>\n

However, he shared the president\u2019s concerns that foreign companies could easily access the US market, while US firms looking to sell abroad encounter hurdles in the form of tariffs and other taxes.<\/p>\n

One of the roughly 50 workers at Vanson Leathers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a very uneven and unfair trade path for a company like Vanson,\u201d said Mr van der Sleesen, whose business was founded in 1974 and employed more than 160 people as recently as 2000, before the wallop of China\u2019s entry into the global order shrunk the workforce to about 50.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe shouldn\u2019t charge them and they shouldn\u2019t charge us in my view, but that\u2019s never going to happen,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

For now, demand for his jackets, which can sell for thousands of dollars, has held up. He said his suppliers in the US were reporting an uptick in activity.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe haven\u2019t heard overtime in the textile world for 20 years!\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to be confident that you can predict what it\u2019s going to shake out to be because the changes have been so dramatic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Retired transit worker Tom Teixeira believes it will take time for things to improve<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On the streets of Fall River, many Trump supporters said they remained willing to give the president time to put his strategy to the test.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should be able to manufacture,\u201d said Tom Teixeira.<\/p>\n

The 72-year-old retired transit worker voted for Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024, won over in part by his message on the economy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know how it was, and it can improve, but it\u2019s not going to improve overnight,\u201d said Mr Teixeira, who is not related to the Teixeira manufacturers, adding that he had yet to notice any major price increases this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cA year from now, if things aren\u2019t cheaper, we\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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