WHEN U.S. President Donald Trump decided to raise tariffs on Chinese imports last month, Francis O’Brien was left with no choice but to add a 4 percent fee on every item of furniture he sells.

O’Brien, who owns two Furniture Market retail stores in Modesto, California, is trying to cover added costs from Trump’s 25 percent levy on US$200 billion of Chinese imports that hit Saturday.

“I don’t have any other option,” he said of his decision to raise prices on all his furniture. “It’s too hard to go through the 5,000 products I have and figure out what’s from China.”

He is hardly alone in dealing with the chaos created by Trump’s trade policy decisions. More than a dozen furniture retailers, manufacturers, and vendors interviewed are already adopting new strategies to mitigate the impact of the China tariffs.

Like O’Brien, some are hiking prices. Others said they are canceling or pausing orders. Still others are imposing tough new contract terms, rerouting sourcing and discussing ways to share costs with each other.

When Trump first imposed 10 percent tariffs on furniture and other Chinese goods in September, some furniture retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers agreed to divvy up the costs.

For instance, reclining chair and sofa maker Manwah Holdings, which ships around US$470 million annually to large U.S. furniture retailers from its factory near Shenzen, absorbed 5 percent of the 10 percent U.S. tariffs.

Now, with tariffs rising to 25 percent, Manwah is back in negotiations with retailers. “Manwah has committed to additional tariff relief dollars but the amount will be based on an individual conversation with each of our customers,” spokesman Kevin Castellani said in an email.

But such offsets are often limited to the big factories and purchasers, and many in the US$114 billion U.S. retail furniture industry are scrambling to cope with a sharp rise in costs from their biggest supplier.

Last year, the U.S. imported US$5.7 billion in wood furniture; US$5.3 billion in upholstered furniture; US$7.2 billion in “metal and other” furniture and almost US$1 billion in mattresses from China for residential use, according to an analysis by investment banking and advisory firm Mann, Armistead & Epperson.

Jeff Child, president of Berkshire Hathaway’s RC Willey Home Furnishings, canceled an order for leather chairs and sofas after one Chinese manufacturer declined to help cover the extra tariff.

Unable to make the higher price work for his 12-store chain, Child scrapped the 15-container order, worth just over US$300,000.

None of the industry players have enough profit margin to absorb the 25 percent tariffs, said Wallace Epperson, managing director at Mann, Armistead & Epperson.(SD-Agencies)