How shifting tariff policy hits one Pennsylvania business
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 4 November 2025
⏱️ 7 minutes
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Summary
Oral arguments over the Trump administration's "reciprocal tariffs" are set for tomorrow, in a test over limits to a president's power to act without Congress. Whichever way the high court decides, however, the co-founder of True Places, a Pennsylvania-based folding camp chair company, thinks that likely won't be the end of the tariff rollercoaster. Plus, Norway's massive sovereign wealth fund has voted against Elon Musk’s pay package from Tesla. Why?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Whitewater Rapids of Changing Tariffs for businesses that get parts from overseas. |
| 0:07.8 | I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. In a test over limits to a president's power to act without |
| 0:13.1 | Congress, oral arguments are set for tomorrow in the U.S. Supreme Court over a subset of the Trump |
| 0:19.2 | administration's import taxes, the ones dubbed reciprocal tariffs. |
| 0:23.4 | Ahead of that, we continue to talk to businesses benefiting or losing out to the highest U.S. |
| 0:28.0 | tariffs since the 1930s. |
| 0:30.2 | Today, not your grandfather's folding camp chair. |
| 0:33.4 | It's a Pennsylvania-based business with a global supply chain called True Places. |
| 0:38.1 | The chairs are pricier than most, and I will say nicer than most, like for camping or |
| 0:43.0 | tailgating, that kind of thing. Ben Nepler is co-founder. Welcome. Thanks for having me. |
| 0:47.8 | So look, there was a long stretch some years ago where a U.S.-based company could set up a supply chain somewhere in the world |
| 0:56.3 | and set it and forget it. Like, you could have that relationship for years. You've had to, |
| 1:01.5 | I think, refine your supply chain quite a bit in recent years? |
| 1:06.4 | When we started the company, the entire category of this kind of product is all made in Asia, |
| 1:14.0 | primarily in China. From the beginning, we were trying to figure out alternatives to that. |
| 1:19.6 | Last year, we finally found a viable alternative in Cambodia, so outside of China. |
| 1:25.0 | It took us about a year to move and transition our manufacturing from China to Cambodia, so outside of China. It took us about a year to move and transition our manufacturing |
| 1:29.5 | from China to Cambodia. And then, yeah, we've been getting hit with a lot more tariffs again this |
| 1:37.3 | year. Yeah, with the shifting tariff landscape, Cambodia, there's a tariff that is now a lot higher than it was to start the year, right? |
| 1:46.3 | In the last six months, the tariff rate on products like we make in Cambodia coming into the |
| 1:53.8 | U.S. has gone from 0% to 49% to 10% to 36% to 19% plus all kinds of other threats and other tariffs. |
| 2:06.5 | So it's really impossible to plan when you've got no idea what that's going to look like tomorrow. |
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