They Voted for Trump. His Tariffs Took Down Their Family-Owned Sawmill

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1:10Watch the step right there. All this lumber is lumber that got out. When you walk into the J.W. Jones Lumber Company, one of the first things you'll probably notice is how noisy it is. You go in, you put in earplugs. This place is loud, right? And there's a kind of real cacophony.

1:33J.W. Jones is a sawmill in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. From stripping off the bark and sawing to trimming, sorting and drying the wood in kilns, every day the mill turns dozens of logs into processed lumber boards, the kind used in the visible wood in a house, like your baseboards or stair treads. Bloomberg Economics reporter Sean Donnan took a trip to North Carolina, to the Old North State, with our producer Rachel Lewis-Kriskie to meet the Joneses, the family that runs the business. It's a mill that has been there and in this family since the 1930s. The J.W. Jones Lumber Company focuses really on Southern pine.

2:14The Jones family has been in the lumber business since 1882. Today, brothers Wilson and Stephen co-own two lumber mills. Stephen runs J.W. Jones and Wilson runs Mackey's Ferry Sawmill. And while the JW mill was as loud as ever, Mackie's Ferry sounded very different. I've grown all my life in the lumber business. And to hear nature at a sawmill, I think for any lumberman, is not natural. I don't want to be overly dramatic, but in a way, it's as unnerving as watching a loved one take their final breath.

3:07On July 1st, the brothers decided to close down Mackey's Ferry. The tipping factor? President Donald Trump's so-called Liberation Day tariffs. When I say Liberation Day, I cannot put enough snark and sarcasm in my voice because we weren't liberated. Wilson said they've mothballed it, meaning they're maintaining the mill for potential use or maybe to sell it. But altogether, its production has shut down, and the 50 people who worked at that mill were laid off. Liberation Day, it did. At the time, it had damn near liberated me from our business, and in essence, it has. I'm bitter about that. After Trump announced sweeping tariffs on April 2nd, several countries responded with retaliatory tariffs, including China.

4:00And that hit Mackey's Ferry hard. Until recently, 70 to 80 percent of the wood coming from the Mackey's Ferry sawmill was going to China and Vietnam, a primary market for U.S. hardwood. While most of what comes out of the brothers' other mill, softwood, ends up in the United States. After calculating the staggering cost of exporting lumber, the Jones brothers decided it was time to stop production at Mackey's. About a third of their overall business revenue disappeared. This is not just a story about a sawmill in North Carolina and a little crossroads of a place. This is a story about what's going on in a lot of rural America right now.

4:41Since April, Trump's tariffs have shocked supply chains and raised prices of both imported and domestic goods. While President Trump has promised a manufacturing renaissance, between April and August, the U.S. actually lost 42 ,000 manufacturing jobs. They are the first generation in five to have to close something down in this lumber industry. Wilson's a man in the 60s. He's a storyteller, but he's also, you know, a proud man. And he had tears in his eyes as he was describing this. In the old days, you would hear the chipper. We'd have the air compressors going. You'd have the roar of the fans of the kills that ran 24-7.

5:22And you'd come in here and you'd hear all that throaty noise or that hum and roar. And now it's kind of depressing because you can get out of your car and shut the door and then you hear the wind blow.

5:57one of the oldest industries in America.

6:07The Jones family has been in the lumber business in North Carolina going back nearly 150 years. I've heard my mom tell stories about when I was born. They brought me home from the hospital and they went and knocked on the door and four big old sawmill guys out here, you know, dirty and everything like that, took their head off. Now, Ms. Margaret, we want to come see the little boss man. Wilson Jones' memories of growing up are full of sawdust, childhood games, and wood chippings. We'd come out here and we'd sweep or we'd throw sawdust in the bar or we'd play in the shaven's house. When we were little, he's got a scar on one of his cheeks.

6:46He's older. He used to beat up on me, so I stabbed him with a pitchfork. And I can go out there and show you where he did it, too.

6:56The U.S. lumber industry as we know it today started when settlers in America were still under British rule. Back in the early 1700s, North Carolina alone was producing over 50 ,000 British pounds worth of lumber annually. That's equivalent to about 11 million U.S. dollars a year today. North Carolina became the primary source of naval stores, the material used to build and maintain British ships. After the U.S. won its independence and expanded farther west, the country's forests would fuel the industry for centuries. If they hadn't found wood here, there wouldn't have been an America. In the building of America, wood played a mighty part.

7:37But consumption of lumber in the U.S. peaked in the late 1980s, and it's been dipping ever since. That's led to a steady decline in the number of U.S. sawmills, many of which are small, family-owned operations. And American consumer tastes have shifted toward cheaper furniture made from particle board, MDF or laminate, commonly used by companies like IKEA and Amazon. My wife and I have a young couple that we've talked to. They were so happy that they got a new sofa for the new house from Amazon for$400. But I understand that people like IKEA, which is made with particle board and put together compared to a custom-built cabinet or something like that.

8:24I don't have a problem with changing consumer taste. I don't have a problem that there's a different technology that is better than what we have or that makes us obsolete. I don't have a problem with that. I have a problem with the government policy making us obsolete. Even before Trump's tariffs were on the scene, U.S. hardwood lumber was still in a tough spot. Mackey's Ferry Mill, which the Jones family bought in the 1980s, initially served North Carolina's furniture industry. But when that industry started facing competition from China and going offshore in the 1990s, their market changed. And by the early 2000s, they were sending most of their lumber overseas.

9:06By 2008, as the financial crisis hit the housing industry and the main market for their softwood mill, the hardwood operation was keeping the family business afloat by selling most of its output to China. These are narrow margin businesses. There is not a huge premium on this wood. And in fact, you know, one of the ironies of the global economy is that Wilson Jones will tell you It costs more to ship a load of lumber to the port in Norfolk than it does to ship it from Norfolk to a port in China. For a while, that approach was working. According to Wilson, the Mackey's Ferry Mill was regularly shipping millions of dollars in hardwood to their biggest customers in China and Vietnam.

9:48The Joneses had moved with the times. By 2017, China became the largest single market for exported lumber from the U.S., followed by Mexico and Canada. And when the U.S. imposed an escalating series of tariffs on China in 2018 during Trump's first term, the Joneses managed to weather the fallout, even as China retaliated. We just kind of took it with our lumps and said, all right, you know what, I'll tell you what, we bore half of it, of the tariff, and then our customer, they bore half of it. And that was kind of an industry-wide thing. But Trump's second-term tariffs were even more aggressive.

10:26On April 2nd, the president announced a higher 34 % tariff on Chinese imports. China, along with several other U.S. trading partners, retaliated again. It would kick off a rapidly escalating trade war that sent shockwaves through global markets. I said, where are we now? We're at 145%. I said, whoa, that's high. That's high. They were doing no business whatsoever, and they were having a lot of problems. We were very nice to China. I don't know if they're going to be nice to us, but we were very nice to China. For American hardwood, the reciprocal tariffs got as high as 125 percent. What took you over the edge here?

11:03What caused you to shut this down? Honestly, the market conditions in relation to the retaliatory tariffs that we have in China, they put the final nails in the coffin. But there are other inherent issues. There's a raw material issue. I didn't do a good enough job getting some of our people to pivot. And then there are real capital issues with being able to modernize and being able to modernize efficiently. But the final nail in the coffin was when we couldn't sell the lumber. When President Trump imposed tariffs back in April, wood from Mackey's Ferry worth some$500 ,000 was on its way to China as part of a regular shipment.

11:50Within days, that shipment was facing tariffs worth more than the wood itself. If President Trump pulled up here today and you walked him into the sawmill, what would you tell him? Well, I'd like to say, what the heck? Actually, I'd like to say about nine different explanations. But, you know, President Trump, gee, I understand what you're trying to do, but you're on a fool's mission. And you're not helping out a few. You're hurting a lot. If you put all these little communities together from Maine over to Michigan down to Mississippi and Alabama, it's having the same effect on these small little communities.

12:36From the guy that's just stacking lumber to the guy that's sawing, don't even care about the guy that's the mill owner. What about those guys? The White House did not respond to a request for comment. As the brothers criticized Trump's trade policies, Sean asked them if they voted for him and for those trade policies to begin with. I voted for Trump because it wasn't an alternative. I mean, at all. Did you vote for him all the way back to 2016? I voted for Trump all three times. Did you? Yep, I did. But I literally was in the voting booth and I wrapped my knuckles and the Trump one hurt more. And that was the one that I voted for.

13:19because it was just, it was so disgusting. And I hate to say that, but that's literally how I made that choice. Okay, so you voted for the man. You both voted for the man. The man's policies have contributed to you going out of business. Do you have any regrets about voting for the man?

13:41After the break, how the closure of Mackey's Ferry Sawmill could impact the area's economy, and how Wilson and Stephen feel about President Trump and his policies today.

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15:03For years, Mackey's Ferry Sawmill in North Carolina relied on exporting its goods to China and Vietnam after a dip in domestic demand for its high-quality hardwood. But President Trump's trade war with China dealt a blow that the mill's owners say they couldn't come back from. As part of the administration's efforts to bolster some industries affected by tariffs, the U.S. has prioritized bailouts for agriculture and soybeans over assistance for other industries, like lumber. Tremendous amounts of the soybeans and other farm products are going to be purchased immediately, starting immediately. Wilson-Jones says some of the farmers who might benefit from that are relatives, but that across the board, from soybeans to lumber, they want something more.

15:46You hear Main Street, and you're talking about Main Street in Columbus, Ohio. You're not talking about Main Street in Roper, North Carolina. I can say my relatives that are in farming, they don't want to bail out. And I would be willing to bet my industry colleagues in the hardwood lumber industry, they don't want to bail out. They want access to their markets. And that door has been shut. Well, I'm Kelly Chesson. I'm the Economic and Strategic Development Director for Washington County. In the county where Mackey's Ferry is located, the damage from the mill's closure has already been done. It is a big blow, especially now, you know, after COVID.

16:29Everybody kind of was on stall during COVID. But then just to see one of your longest standing businesses close its doors, you know, 50 guys, men and women are going to lose their jobs. Yeah, that is a blow. Kelly says back in the mid-2000s, the region lost around 200 jobs. when Canadian paper company Domtar merged with Weyerhaeuser, the owner of a local pulp mill. And a mill closure like this is another hit. Mackey's Ferry was one of the largest private employers in the county. Kelly doesn't know what this will cost the local economy yet in lost business taxes. It's not as a significant blow as the Weyerhaeuser blow was for us, but it's still one of those ones that's going to be felt in the community.

17:08So that was 20 years ago. We still haven't recovered from that. people want stability. And then when you have major companies like Mackey's, who's been here for over 100 years closed, what does that say to the business viability here in Washington County? And I know we don't want that to be our message, but it's just one of those things where all of these rural and small communities are facing some of these same things. The Supreme Court heard arguments earlier this month on the legality of the tariffs. Lower courts have ruled that they're illegal. And Sean says it's still unclear what restitution would take place if the Supreme Court agrees.

17:44Not all of that economic damage, if you talk to economists, people in business, small business people, is going to be fixed immediately. There is no easy solution to repair that. But for the Jones brothers, this is kind of too late. The story of tariffs is often a story of unintended consequences. Donald Trump did not intend to cause the shutdown of a sawmill in North Carolina when he imposed these tariffs on China. He was trying to rebalance an economic relationship. In his mind, these tariffs are going to help bring back manufacturing jobs. But the story of tariffs through history has always been that they lead to retaliation and unintended consequences.

18:37Do you have any regrets about voting for the mayor? There are some things I regret about voting for President Trump. Yes, 100%. Trade policy is one of them, even though that I wish he could have moderated his tone. Well, I understand you have to do one thing to get elected and then something else, but I wish it hadn't have turned out that way. That being said, given to two people running, regardless of what they said on the campaign trail, I would have voted for President Trump again. I don't necessarily have regrets. I mean, it came out that that's what he was going to fight for. and knowingly that would affect us probably because the only place to really ship a volume of lumber was either Vietnam or China and you know so you know it's going to affect us but I don't outside of not voting I don't think I had a choice to vote any other direction I don't like the way we're going about immigration strategy, if you will.

19:48But something had to be done to control our borders, I think. That's being accomplished now. Having ICE and everything else, I get tired. I don't even watch the news anymore. Just because it's the same thing over and over again. Kind of like insanity. The last board at Mackey's Ferry Sawmill came off the production line on September 29th. Wilson and Steven laid off 50 people, some of whom had worked for the mill for decades. Is this the last of it in here? This is kind of the last of it packaged up and piled up. There'll be some we'll be able to sell here and there, but it's just we're trying to get the biggest chunks out of it right now.

20:36Sean and Rachel visited about a month later as the process of closing down was nearly complete. And amidst cobwebs and the simple electric hum of the lights, Wilson showed them what's left of Mackey's Ferry. You said you hadn't been here in a few weeks. Yeah. There's not really a lot that I can do. I learned, it took a while, because I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, But I learned it like, you know, here, these guys, instead of me telling them, take a step forward, step right, step left, go backwards, just say, okay, look, you know how to do your job and walk away. You're letting them do their thing.

21:14Yeah, let them do their thing. The Jones brothers offered jobs to Mackey's Ferry workers at the other mill, J.W. Jones Lumber, about an hour away. Only 10 out of the original 50 took them up on it. I read about economics. economics is data it's aggregate data and we often lose sight of the fact that that economics is people and economy is its people it's not its economists wilson jones is is one of those people and then the other thing is is you're just gonna stand around make yourself miserable pull your head out of your rear and try to you know make a difference where you can make a difference quit feeling sorry for yourself

21:59That was, it's hard to see someone going through that and feeling that burden. It's the only way you can describe that is that this is personal for Wilson Jones.

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