When it comes to home goods and cookware, the Chinese houseware stores on Clement Street have some of the most affordable choices across the city: $5.99 brooms, $5.50 plastic stools, or $1.99 origami chopstick holders.
As President Donald Trump announced his sweeping tariffs on Wednesday, including a staggering 54 percent on imports from China, those prices appear to be quickly headed for nostalgia.
On a recent Tuesday at Kamei Housewares & Restaurant Supply on Clement Street, Victor Chan picked out a few bright-colored plastic strainers for his plant-repotting project.
The strainers he picked out would sell for about $5 apiece at Home Depot, Chan said, but at Kamei, they are half the price. “It’s cheaper and more accessible,” said the young Richmond resident. “It fills in the nooks and crannies of what I need, without driving all the way to Home Depot.”
With the pending tariffs, however, these days may be no more.
Richmond District business owner Musk Chen, who owns Trending Houseware on Clement Street, just across from Kamei, was beside himself with worry about the tariffs.
“I have the heart to do this business, but the price increases are so crazy,” Chen said in Mandarin. “We don’t want to raise prices either. The customers won’t understand. And the landlord … In this economy, they ignore you if you ask for a lower rent.”
About 80 percent of Chen’s products are made in China, he said. He’s already suffered from price increases since the pandemic, and worries that the forthcoming tariffs will squeeze his businesses even more.
A few years ago, a box of 200 nitrile gloves cost him just a few cents. Now, for a much smaller box of 50, it costs more than $2, he said.
“I only have money to hire three workers right now. For each one of them, I only barely have enough to pay their wages,” he said. “Being a business owner like this, I might as well just work for someone else.”
In the past, Chen sold pajama sets insulated with cotton padding, targeting seniors living in the Richmond.
“They sold well in my old store for $12.99. But now, even the wholesale price is about $18. I wouldn’t even dare to stock,” he said. “The seniors couldn’t take it. They say the price has gone up too much, and called me a crook.”
He will have to raise the prices when the tariff’s impacts begin to show, or take a loss on each sale. “The wool comes from the sheep’s back,” Chen said, deploying a Chinese idiom. “If the products are expensive, my prices will go up.”
At Gold Star Discount Store, at 9th Avenue and Clement Street, the owner, Hai Chung, said she hasn’t yet felt the impact.
“Everything’s here for a long time. It’s old supply,” she said. Close to her store register, there were dusty magnets from iconic spots in San Francisco, the sort commonly seen in Chinatown souvenir stores.
Chung, who has owned the store since 2018, said only some products at her store were imported from China, others from Taiwan or other countries. She only orders more products when old ones sell out, about every two months.
“If the price comes up too high, I can’t sell like that,” she said.
Move production to Vietnam! Oh wait, that’s already been happening, now their tariff’s even higher than China’s. We all heard the narrative: There’s no place to go other than back to the U.S. To what extend that’s going to happen: Remains to be seen. Chances are, this tariff mayhem will tank US manufacturing, ahead of everybody else’s actually. Just wait. (Side bar: Personally, I’m looking at Stellantis, in a quite precarious spot even without the tariff headwinds, as the canary in the coalmine. Yesterday, they were already forced to ramp down production in the US and Canada. My guess: It’s only a matter of time until their board decides to throw in the towel, sell what they can, and wind the rest down)
Meanwhile, Trump’s going to use the money that’s coming in from the tariffs to lord over pick-the-winner auditions: Subsidies and tax brakes for those who enthusiastically kiss the ring and further south. Around the beltway, a very special sleazy weasel variety of sociopath consultant will thrive, pulling down rates and fees to go court the WH. Will Mr.s Chen and Chung see much if any of that? My guess, unlikely.
And as far as Trump’s dreams go, similar scenes would play out with our international trading partners. But… if they have the stamina, they’ll wait things out, watch US manufacturing implode, and in the long run leave the U.S. with no option other than importing even more than in the past.
US is doing China a geopolitical favor. The whole world has gotta be thinking China ain’t so bad after all right about now.
According to Trump this insane scheme will bring manufacturing back to the US, or something.
People working hard and the guy who never did work in his life ruins it for all of them on a whim.
Manufacturing left the US for cheap labor.
The only way it’s coming back if through cheap labor .
Do we really think we can make $7 an hour and afford to live in the US? I think not!
Regarding the pajamas mentioned in the article, my friend was in Hong Kong recently at a Chinese products department store (all products made in China, the good stuff, not junk.) The 100% cotton women’s pajamas were selling for almost US$50 ! US DOLLARS! This is WITHOUT tariffs! Incredible!
Buy American.
That doesn’t bring manufacturing of cheap goods “back” when they never were here. It’s a fake slogan in this context. You should have been buying American this entire time, and yet American manufacturing still requires raw materials from other places we’ve now created fake tax barriers to importing. Incredibly mismanaged and not carefully decided or strategic in any sense – to the point of taxing the exports of islands that have no exports and zero population. That just proves they don’t know what they’re doing here, if nothing else does to you. The stock market losses won’t necessarily come back when this madness ends, either.