CLEARFIELD, Utah — As President Donald Trump continues to threaten to enact tariffs on imported products into the country, a local Utah business owner explained what that action could mean to his company.
“We’re certainly watching that very closely. There’s been a lot of announcements but no details yet,” explained Vince Rhoton, the chief sales and marketing officer of Lifetime Products.
Lifetime Products says its goal is to be efficient and provide great quality products to its customers.
“Our philosophy is to do as much as we possibly can of the manufacturing process ourselves," added Rhoton. "We have our own powder coating, we fabricate the steel here and marry that together with the plastic part.”
While the company does have additional manufacturing in China, Rhoton said if something were to change, Lifetime Products has the ability to shift production.
“Ultimately, freight costs are one of the largest components in the consumer product price and our products are large ones. We have a lot of large freight involved and it’s always an advantage to be manufactured in the market where it’s going to be used in the US," he said.
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At World Trade Center Utah, they’re looking at the situation from different perspectives.
“It provides opportunities for Utah companies to manufacture here locally and build out those resources. In the near term there might be some pain because it’s hard to reallocate capital and build infrastructure quickly that doesn’t happen overnight,” explained World Trade Center Utah president and CEO Jonathan Freedman.
But Freedman added that a lot of Utahn's jobs depend on international trade.
“About 433,000 jobs," he said, "about 20% of our job market is associated with international trade. It’s not an insignificant amount on the line here. It could affect our job market."
