Tool Club Etc<\/a> on Harwin Drive in Houston\u2019s Chinatown, general manager Steven Elter said the store imports furniture, cookware and other metal products and watched costs spike when tariffs rose in recent years.<\/p>\n\u201cVery excited. We were very relieved that the products that we were importing will now be a lot cheaper than we\u2019ve been paying.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elter said metal goods had faced particularly high duties.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey could be anywhere from 50% to 75%, depending on where it came from.\u201d<\/p>\n
The store\u2019s distributors raised prices in response, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur distributor that we buy this from, he had along the general line about 10 to 15% increase on his products over the last year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tool Club has adjusted its sourcing to avoid the steepest duties. Elter said the company shifted much of its furniture production from China to countries with lower tariffs, including Vietnam, Indonesia and Taiwan.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut now about 60% has gone over to Vietnam.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elter said the business tried to absorb some tariff costs to avoid sticker shock for shoppers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe try to eat as much as we can. Because we don\u2019t want to have a sticker shock for the customer.\u201d<\/p>\n
He and his staff said supply timing will delay when lower tariffs show up on store shelves. Shipping from overseas can take months from order to dock.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe shipping is about three to four months. Well, from placing the order to dock is three to 4 months. From leaving the port in Shanghai it\u2019s about six weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elter estimated the tariff hit for a single container could be substantial.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, thousands easy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Independent mechanics and parts suppliers also reported cost pressures tied to import duties. At Redline Autosports, owner Junior Bekdely showed brake pads and other parts that arrived with higher price tags.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are brake pads. These are definitely from, yeah, these are Chinese.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bekdely said prices for common replacement parts have risen and the increases are passed to customers.<\/p>\n
\u201cwe have seen like, like these, you know, the price point that we used to get them at, they\u2019ve gone up probably about 20%.\u201d<\/p>\n
He gave a concrete example of the effect.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s say, this pad set, if we used to get it for $50, now they\u2019ve gone up to $60.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bekdely said shop operators do not always track every change in sourcing but feel the effect when suppliers raise prices.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat cost gets passed on to the consumer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Local business owners said any reduction in tariff burdens would be welcome, but they expected the pass-through of savings to consumers to be gradual.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat would be fantastic. I mean, any savings that we can pass on, we\u2019d love to do that,\u201d Bekdely said.<\/p>\n
Elter said the time to clear existing inventory with higher-cost pricing could range from months to a year, depending on the product and turnover.<\/p>\n
\u201cDepending on the product, it could go from six months to a year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some businesses have responded to higher tariff costs by changing suppliers or the countries where products are made. Elter said larger operators can shift orders to multiple countries, while smaller retailers may lack that flexibility.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re lucky, we source from multiple countries. So, I\u2019m not like I can say, if I have a product say from China, I can source it from Vietnam or even Taiwan. Even India is a choice that we can import from if we have to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other Houston businesses that use imported inputs said they were still evaluating the long-term effects. Saint Arnold\u2019s Brewing Company, for example, uses barley from Canada and cans from Mexico, and owner Brock Wagner told the reporter he was still assessing how the tariff changes would affect his supply chain and pricing.<\/p>\n
For now, local owners said the change offers relief but not immediate price cuts for all customers. Inventory already in the pipeline and product sourcing decisions will determine how quickly consumers see lower prices.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON \u2013 Local businesses that rely on imported goods said they welcomed a recent change in federal tariff…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173956,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[70340,406,56,58,57,70339,251,70338,59527],"class_list":["post-173955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-export","tag-government","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-import","tag-local-news","tag-supreme-county","tag-tariff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}