Canadian furniture maker is moving its operations to NC. Are Trump’s tariffs the reason?
Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina didn’t equivocate when assigning credit for more furniture manufacturing coming to his Congressional district.
“THE TRUMP EFFECT AT WORK FOR NORTH CAROLINA!” he posted last week on X, sharing news that the Canadian furniture maker Prepac was shutting its home facilities outside Vancouver and shifting all production to its four-year-old factory in the tiny town of Whitsett, about halfway between Greensboro and Burlington.
Adding furniture operations to North Carolina’s Piedmont region is especially noteworthy. Between 1993 and 2022, the state lost 60% of its furniture sector jobs as competition from lower-cost Asian imports increased. Whitsett is a 30-minute drive from High Point, considered “The Furniture Capital of the World” for its density of manufacturers and biannual market.
“This will help grow our economy and bring more good-paying jobs for folks in our area!” Hudson concluded.
His enthusiasm was not matched on the other side of the border.
“It’s a slap in the face to Canadian workers and Canadian consumers who have made this company a success since 1979,” Gavin McGarrigle, western regional director of the Canadian union Unifor, said in a March 11 statement.
But both McGarrigle and Hudson say President Donald Trump’s tariffs against Canada — those imposed, then rescinded, and still threatened — influenced Prepac’s move.
“Our union has been warning about lost investment and production since Trump began his economic war on Canada and Canadian workers,” Unifor’s national president Lana Payne said. “In this case, Prepac and its equity owners are using the tariffs as an excuse to redirect all their production to the US. It’s pure greed.”
Only the company itself disagrees with the role U.S. tariffs had in its upcoming move.
How did Prepac end up in NC?
Prepac produces ready-to-assemble home furniture, which it sells online through retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Target. Headquartered in British Columbia, it was locally owned until the Toronto-based private equity firm TorQuest Partners acquired it in 2019.
The next year, North Carolina awarded Prepac an economic incentive to open a new East Coast factory in Whitsett. The company opened the 260,000-square-foot facility and had created 129 local jobs as of last year, state commerce records show.
Unifor said more than 170 Prepac workers in British Columbia will lose their jobs due to the Canadian facility closures. In an interview Tuesday with The News & Observer, McGarrigle said the union ratified a collective bargaining agreement with the company in mid-December.
“At no point during that bargaining did the company talk about shutting everything down,” he said. One thing that changed between December and now, McGarrigle noted, is the U.S. President.
However, in a statement provided to The N&O, Prepac CEO Nick Bozikis called the decision to consolidate operations in North Carolina “the product of many months of consideration and analysis, and began long before any tariff risks to Prepac’s business arose.”
“The last several years have been challenging for North American furniture manufacturers with overall demand currently lower than when we opened the North Carolina facility in 2021,” he said, noting that around 70% of the company’s demand is on the East Coast.
Trump’s tariffs on Canada and ‘Liberation Day’
What new tariffs the U.S. may impose on Canada, and Canada onto its southern neighbor, remains an open question. President Trump has established April 2 as “Liberation Day” when he’ll place reciprocal tariffs on a range of countries and products, though he has softened his tariff policies multiple times already during his two months in office.
But for the Trump administration, the cause of Prepac moving all its manufacturing to North Carolina is clear.
“THE TRUMP EFFECT: Prepac, a Canadian furniture manufacturer, announced it will move production from Canada to the U.S.” the White House posted Friday on X. The administration also included the news Friday in its weekly roundup of “wins.”
This story was originally published March 26, 2025 at 2:47 PM with the headline "Canadian furniture maker is moving its operations to NC. Are Trump’s tariffs the reason?."
