Furniture, 30% tariffs risk 'wiping out the US market'
The alarm from the president of FederlegnoArredo, Claudio Feltrin, who, however, urges Europe to avoid a 'tariffs against tariffs' clash
2' min read
2' min read
"A 30% tariffs on the finished product risks zeroing out furniture exports to the United States.". The president of FederlegnoArredo Claudio Feltrin - usually not very prone to alarmism - does not mince words when commenting on Trump's decision.
A 1.7 billion market at risk
This is a huge loss for the Italian wood-furniture industry (which generated EUR 51.7 billion in turnover in 2024), and in particular for the furniture industry, which generates EUR 14.4 billion in turnover abroad out of a total of EUR 27.5 billion (according to data from the Fla Studies Centre), for which the United States is not only the second largest foreign market after France (with EUR 1.7 billion in exports in 2024), but also one of the few, among the main destination countries, that has held up in these last two years of slowdown.
On the contrary: in the first quarter of 2025, probably due to a 'stockpiling effect' in view of the tariffs, exports to the United States increased by 3% for the entire wood-furniture industry, compared to a stationary export trend (-0.4% compared to Q1 2024).
The burden of dollar devaluation
."We are now waiting to better understand the mechanism of how tariffs work, but a flat 30% on the value of the product is a figure that will certainly have a heavy impact on consumption, especially if we consider that, to the value of the tax, we have to add the devaluation of the dollar. This brings us to an additional 40% on the final cost, which risks being unsustainable'.
Especially for companies that produce consumer goods and, although they target a high end of the market, are directly affected by the loss of purchasing power of end customers.
