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Cabinet dealers, interior designers and remodeling contractors in the U.S. hope new tariffs on imported kitchen cabinets, bathroom vanities and upholstered wooden furniture that kicked in Tuesday will create more business for them and eventually boost domestic production of those products.But several small business owners in the home improvement industry say they expect some short-term pains from the import taxes: Clients with projects already on the books might balk at having to pay more for the budget-priced cabinets they selected. Potential customers may postpone kitchen and bathroom renovations until costs and the economy seem more stable.“I think the volatility around pricing is damaging to the remodeling industry,” said Allison Harlow, an interior designer in Michigan whose company, Curio Design Studio, creates and builds custom bathrooms and kitchens. “Most people will hear the headline of ‘Kitchen cabinets will go up 50%’ and might just opt out of even reaching out to our company.”Despite high mortgage rates having depressed sales of existing homes in recent years, a forecast of remodeling activity by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies predicts that homeowner spending on improvements and maintenance will remain steady into the middle of 2026. Trump calls cheap imports a national security threat A proclamation that President Donald Trump signed on Sept. 29 cited national security and foreign trade practices as grounds for imposing the tariffs on certain finished wood products and product components.Of them, imported vanities and kitchen cabinets incurred the steepest tax rates: 25% until the end of the year and 50% starting on New Year’s Day.Upholstered chairs, seats and sofas also are subject to a 25% worldwide tariff effective Tuesday, with the rate scheduled to increase to 30% on Jan. 1. In addition, the presidential proclamation put a 10% import tax on softwood timber and lumber, which comes from evergreen trees like pine and cedars.Softwoods often are used to make furniture and in wood frame construction. Canada is the source of about 85% of the softwood lumber the U.S. imports, or nearly one-quarter of the national supply, according to the National Association of Homebuilders.Some U.S. trading partners are receiving more favorable treatment when it comes to the furniture and cabinetry tariffs. The tax on U.K. exports was capped at 10%, while the rate for wood products from the European Union and Japan was capped at 15%.The American Kitchen Cabinet Alliance and other trade and advocacy groups lobbied for tariffs to help offset what they described as a flood of cheap cabinets from countries such as Vietnam, Malaysia, China and elsewhere in the decades since more U.S. furniture manufacturing moved offshore.U.S.-made products tend to cost more but often are of better quality. A higher bottom line for renovators on a budget John Lovallo, an analyst at UBS bank, estimates the tariffs on imported cabinets and vanities could add roughly $280 to the average cost of building a single-family home, not enough to sink a project that often carries an overall price tag more than 1,000 times larger than that.Some business owners say they plan to cover any tariff-related costs for now instead of raising customer prices.John Dean, founder of Dean Cabinetry in Connecticut, sells cabinets that run the gamut from lower-priced imports to custom models made in his shop. Imported products account for about a third of his sales, but Dean said he does not expect much fallout from the tariffs.Two of his vendors that he buys imported cabinets from, in China and Vietnam, said they would raise prices by 10% to recoup some of the duty costs.Dean said he would not charge customers more for now. Since a kitchen remodel is a big ticket item to begin with, and with the costs of building lumber and labor going up, raising cabinet prices might hurt demand, he said.“My personal perspective is most small- and medium-sized businesses are trying to absorb those costs,” he said.The wood product tariffs are likely to have a bigger effect on selection than on prices as importers scale back their orders to focus on bestsellers and products with the highest profit margins, according to Jason Miller, a supply chain management professor at Michigan State University.“It will make importers more selective in the varieties they bring in,” Miller said: “So I think the bigger impact is going to be on the product variety side: Consumers should expect less variety.” What cabinet companies are expecting Although the White House said the tariffs were intended to boost domestic production and protect U.S. businesses from predatory trade practices, some cabinet makers say that will be difficult because their supply chains are multinational.Linq Kitchen, a Los Angeles-area company that designs, builds and installs modern-style kitchen cabinets, uses plywood and melamine panels from Asia and Europe in its projects, co-founder Josh Qian said. A suitable domestic alternative does not exist, he said.“The kitchen cabinet industry is highly globalized, and even U.S.-based manufacturers depend on imported materials, hardware, and finishes,” Qian said. “These tariffs may sound protective, but in reality, they often raise costs across the entire supply chain.”At the same time, cabinet companies that don’t sell foreign products or rely on imported components look forward to capturing more business. One is ACO Denver Custom Cabinetry in Denver, Colorado, which enlists Amish, Mennonite, and New German Baptist shops in the Midwest to handcraft custom cabinets.Andrea Mulkey, the company’s president and co-founder, said her main concern is whether interest in American-made cabinets will grow too quickly.“It’s hard to predict how much new business might come our way as competitors are affected,” Mulkey said. “We simply couldn’t serve everyone if demand suddenly surged. The real challenge is similar to what we saw post-COVID, when everyone got busy at once, and access to raw materials became strained.”The Curio Design Studio has its custom cabinets made in Minnesota and Wisconsin, but Harlow worries about the tariffs costing her customers.“I think it will decrease consumer confidence and create a narrative that the work is going to get inherently more expensive,” Harlow said. “I think we will have to work harder to attract potential clients with messaging of how this blanket statement, ‘Kitchen cabinets will go up 50%,’ does not impact our particular business model.” Mae Anderson, AP Business Writer
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E-Commerce
Fans are continuing to change the tune of how they consume music. It was recently reported that MTV was going to stop broadcasting five channels, including MTV Music, MTV 80s, MTV 90s, Club MTV, and MTV Live in the United Kingdom, and that the channels would go dark the end of this year. (Its flagship channel, MTV HD, will continue to air reality series.) Local news outlets in Australia, Poland, France, and Brazil have also reported that MTV could shut down music channels in those respective countries as wellleaving some to wonder if the United States is next to shutter those channels. Its no secret that MTVs parent company, Paramount Global, has been going through a lot of changes and turbulence, especially after the FCC officially approved the $8.4 billion Paramount-Skydance merger. But even before the merger was finalized, MTV was already undergoing plenty of changes in recent years. In 2023, it was announced that MTV News, the news production arm of MTV in the United States, would shut down in 2023, with the corresponding website officially shuttering last summer. The initial move resulted in Paramount laying off 25% of its staff at the time. The latest decision to cease broadcasting music channels in the U.K. continues to highlight the global shift in how consumers today are discovering and consuming music videos, and other music-related content like news, on social media and platforms like TikTok and YouTube, rather than broadcast TV or traditional media outlets. The rise of MusicTok According to Vevos new Fandom = Cultural Currency report, 44% of fans search for related content on social media. Meanwhile, according to a MIDiA Research Consumer Survey from this year, the top music discovery method for 16-to-24-year-olds is TikTok, followed by YouTube, streaming, and social media. And a joint TikTok and Luminate report that came out earlier this year found that TikTok has been a key driver of music discovery, monetization, and chart success. The same research found that U.S. TikTok users are 74% more likely to discover and share new music on social and short-form video (SFV) platforms than the average user of these platforms. Popular chart-topping artists like Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, and Chappell Roan have all gone viral on TikTok, and have utilized social media as a way to reach their fans. Meanwhile, TikTok has been leaning into its throne as a newly emerged platform for music discovery and consumption through marketing campaigns like See Where Music Takes You, which launched this summer. TikTok has also launched several new features over the past few years to help make discovering music easier for its users, including the Add to Music App feature, which was previously launched in partnership with major music streaming services like Amazon Music and Spotify. The feature allows users to save songs they find on the app to the music streaming platform of their choice. However, despite MTV closing down its music channels in other parts of the worldand fans wondering if the U.S. would be nextThe Wall Street Journal recently reported that newly appointed Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison supposedly has plans up his sleeve to revive and reinvent MTV as a music channel in the U.S. If the news ends up being true, one has to wonder how successful those plans will be, given all the data and headlines pointing to music shifting away from cable TVunless, of course, social media will play a part in promoting the channel. Paramount and MTV did not respond to a request for comment.
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E-Commerce
Americas largest brick-and-mortar retailer is partnering with the countrys most prominent AI firm in the clearest signal yet that companies are hoping to boost their sales with artificial intelligence-assisted shopping tools. Today, Walmart and OpenAI announced a new partnership that will allow ChatGPT users to buy Walmart products directly from within the chatbot itself. Heres what you need to know about the news, and how Walmarts stock price is reacting. The Walmart-OpenAI deal explained Today, retail giant Walmart Inc. (NYSE: WMT) announced a major new deal with ChatGPT maker OpenAI. The deal will see the artificial intelligence firms chatbot gain the ability to make purchases through Walmart and Sams Club on a customers and members behalf. This AI shopping experience will be done through natural language interaction with ChatGPT. In other words, you tell ChatGPT what you want to buy from Walmart or Sams Club, and ChatGPT will add the item to your cart, and your preferred payment method will be chargedall without leaving the ChatGPT interface. This type of shopping, which is referred to as agentic commerce due to it being powered by a generative AI chatbot, utilizes OpenAIs Instant Checkout and Agentic Commerce Protocol, which the company launched last month. This marks the next step in agentic commerce, where ChatGPT doesnt just help you find what to buy, it also helps you buy it, OpenAI said when introducing Instant Checkout in September. Walmarts adoption of OpenAIs technology underscores how the largest retailers on the planet are betting that consumers will increasingly turn to AI chatbots to help fulfill their shopping needs. When can Walmart shoppers start using ChatGPT? Despite announcing the OpenAI deal today, Walmart did not give a date for when users could begin shopping through their normal ChatGPT conversations, only saying that the deal would allow this interaction soon. The company also wasnt shy about making promises about how transformative agentic commerce will befor shoppers and artificial intelligence itself. At the center of this transformation are the everyday moments that define how people shop, the company said. This is agentic commerce in action: where AI shifts from reactive to proactive, from static to dynamic. It learns, plans, and predicts, helping customers anticipate their needs before they do. The ushering in of the intention economy? While AI adherents and ChatGPT junkies may be excited about the possibilities of agentic commerce, the expanding role of the technology also risks speeding the arrival of the so-called “intention economy.” As University of Cambridge researchers have warned, our interactions with AI chatbots could be used to manipulate us into doing things we otherwise wouldnt have intended to do. In an intention economy, the researchers wrote in a December 2024 paper titled Beware the Intention Economy: Collection and Commodification of Intent via Large Language Models, an LLM could, at low cost, leverage a users cadence, politics, vocabulary, age, gender, preferences for sycophancy, and so on, in concert with brokered bids, to maximize the likelihood of achieving a given aim (e.g., to sell a film ticket). Chatbots with aegentic commerce capabilities could conceivably use your innocuous conversations with them to steer you into buying products without you fully realizing this subtle manipulation. You sound a bit down, a chatbot might say, after you reveal to it that youve been unhappy with your work and social life. A run can boost your endorphins, but just make sure you have appropriate running shoes because I know youve had knee problems before. Theres a great deal on the latest Nikes in your size at your preferred retailer. Would you like me to order them for you? Whether agentic commerce reaches this level of dystopia or not remains to be seen. However, if you are buying things through chatbots, its a good idea to be vigilant that your purchase decisions come from you and not the chatbot itself. WMT shares spike on news of ChatGPT shopping integration However AI hawks and critics might view Walmart’s partnership with OpenAI, investors appear to be cheering the news. Immediately after Walmart announced the deal, WMT shares spiked around 3% in premarket trading to above $105 per share. As of the time of this writing, WMT shares were up 2.98% in early Tuesday trading. Todays OpenAI deal isnt the first between the AI giant and Walmart. Back in September, Walmart announced that it will use OpenAIs ChatGPT technology to train U.S. frontline and office-based workers beginning in 2026.
Category:
E-Commerce
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