November 14, 2025 • 20 mins
For years, Mackeys Ferry Sawmill in North Carolina relied on exporting its goods to China and Vietnam after a dip in domestic demand for high-quality hardwood. But President Donald Trump’s trade war with China dealt a blow that the mill’s owners say they couldn’t come back from. In July, just months after the president announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs, they decided to shut it down.
On today’s Big Take podcast, Bloomberg economics reporter Shawn Donnan goes to the “Old North State” to understand the ripple effect of tariffs on one of the oldest industries in America and how the mill’s owner feels about Trump and his policies, one year after voting for him in the ballot booth.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Marcy step all this lumbers lumber that got out.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
When you walk into the J. W. Jones Lumber Company,
one of the first things you'll probably notice is how
noisy it is.
Speaker 4 (00:22):
You go in. You put in ear plugs. This place
is loud, right, and there's a kind of real cacoffiny.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
JW. Jones is a sawmill in Elizabeth City, North Carolina.
From stripping off the bark and sawing to trimming, sorting,
and drying the wooden kilns. Every day, the mill turns
dozens of logs into processed lumber boards, kind of used
in the visible wood in a house, like your baseboards
or stair treads. Bloomberg Economics reporter Sean Donnin took a
(00:55):
trip to North Carolina, to the Old North State with
our producer Rachel Lewis Chrisky to meet the Joneses, the
family that runs the business.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
It's a mill that has been there and in this
family since the nineteen thirties. The JW. Jones Lumber Company
focuses really on southern Pine.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
The Jones family has been in the lumber business since
eighteen eighty two. Today, brothers Wilson and Stephen co owned
two lumber mills. Stephen runs J W. Jones and Wilson
runs Mackie's Ferry sawmill. And while the JW Mill was
as loud as ever, Mackie's Ferry sounded very different.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
I've grown all my life in 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 unnervn as watching a
(01:57):
loved one take their breath.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
On July first, the brothers decided to close down Mackie's Ferry,
the tipping factor President Donald Trump's so called Liberation Day tariffs.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
When I say Liberation Day, I cannot put enough snark
in sarcasm in my voice, because we weren't liberated.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
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 fifty people who
worked at that mill were laid off.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Liberation Day did at the time it had them near
liberated me from our business, and in essence it has
I'm bitter about that.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
After Trump and ound sweeping tariffs on April second, several
countries responded with retaliatory tariffs, including and that hit Mackie's
Fairy hard Until recently, seventy to eighty percent of the
wood coming from the Mackie's Ferry sawmill was going to
China and Vietnam, a primary market for US hardwood, while
most of what comes out of the brothers' other mill, softwood,
(03:16):
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 Macki's. About a third of
their overall business revenue disappeared.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
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 the lot
of rural America right now.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Since 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
US actually lost forty two thousand manufacturing jobs.
Speaker 4 (03:59):
They are the first generation in five to have to
close something down in this lumber industry. Wilson's a man
in the sixties. He's a storyteller, but he's also a
proud man, and he had tears in his eyes as
he was describing this.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
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 twenty four to seven,
and 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
(04:35):
wind blow.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
I'm David Gerrutt, and this is the Big Take from
Bloomberg News Today. On the show, we head to North
Carolina to understand how President Trump's trade war played a
role in the closure of a family run sawmill, and
how his policies are affecting one of the oldest industries
in America. The Jones family has bet in the lumber
(05:09):
business in North Carolina going back nearly one hundred and
fifty years.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
I've heard my mom tell stories about when I was born.
They brought me home from the hospital and went knocking
on the door, and four big old saw meal guys
out here, you know, dirty and everything like that. So head,
miss Margaret, we want to come see the little boss man.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Wilson Jones's memories of growing up are full of sawdust,
childhood games and wood chippings.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
We'd come out here and we'd sweep, or we'd throw
sawdust into bar, or we'd play in the shaven's.
Speaker 5 (05:40):
House when we were a little He's got a scarbody's cheeks.
Speaker 6 (05:46):
He's older.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
He used to beat up on me.
Speaker 5 (05:48):
So I stabbed him with a pitch for and I
can go out there and show you where.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
He did it too.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
The US lumber industry as we know it today started
when settlers in America were still under British rule. Back
in the early seventeen hundreds, North Carolina alone was producing
over fifty thousand British pounds worth of lumber annually. That's
equivalent to about eleven million US dollars a year today.
North Carolina became the primary source of naval stores, the
(06:18):
material used to build and maintain British ships. After the
US won its independence and expanded farther west. The country's
forests would fuel the industry for centuries.
Speaker 7 (06:30):
If they hadn't found what here, there wouldn't have been
in America. In the building of America would play a
mighty part.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
But consumption of lumber in the US peaked in the
late nineteen eighties that it's been dipping ever since. That's
led to a steady decline in the number of US sawmills,
many of which are small, family owned operations, and American
consumer tastes have shifted toward cheaper furniture made from particle
board MDF or laminet commonly used by company is like
(07:00):
Ikea and Amazon.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
My wife and I have a young couple that we've
talked to. They were so happy that they got a
new sofa from the new house from Amazon for four
hundred dollars. But I understand, you know that people like akia,
which is made, you know, with particle board and putting together,
compared to you know, a custom built cabinet or something
(07:23):
like that. I 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 a government policy making us obsolete.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Even before Trump's tariffs were on the scene, US hardwood
lumber was still in a tough spot. Mackie's Fairy Mill,
which the Jones family bought in the nineteen eighties, initially
served North Carolina's furniture industry, but when that industry started
facing competition from China and going offshore in the ninety
ten nineties, their market changed and by the early two
(08:03):
thousands they were sending most of their lumber overseas. By
two thousand and eight, 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.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
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 port in China.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
For a while, that approach was working. According to Wilson,
the Mackie's Ferry Mill was regularly shipping millions of dollars
in hardwood to their biggest customers in China and Vietnam,
the Joneses had moved with the times. By twenty seventeen,
China became the largest single market for exported lumber from
the US, followed by Mexico and Canada. And when the
(08:59):
US imposed an escalating series of tariffs on China in
twenty eighteen during Trump's first term, the jones Is managed
to weather the fallout, even as China retaliated.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
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 in our
customer they bore half of it. And that was kind
of an industry wide thing.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
But Trump's second term tariffs were even more aggressive. On
April second, the President announced a higher thirty four percent
tariff on Chinese imports. China, along with several other US
trading partners, retaliated again. It would kick off a rapidly
escalating trade war that sent shock waves through global markets.
Speaker 7 (09:43):
I said, where are we now. We're at one hundred
and forty five percent. I said, woll that's high.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
That's hig.
Speaker 7 (09:49):
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.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
For American hardwood, the reciprocal tariffs got as high as
one one hundred and twenty five percent.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
What took you over the edge here? What caused you
to shut this down?
Speaker 1 (10:07):
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
(10:27):
there are real capital issues with being able to modernize
and being able to modernize efficiently.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
But the final nail in the coffin was.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
When we couldn't sell the lumber.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
When President Trump imposed tariffs. Back in April, wood from
Mackie's Ferry worth some five hundred thousand dollars was on
its way to China as part of a regular shipment.
Within days, that shipment was facing tariffs worth more than
the wood itself.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
President Trump pulled up here today and you walked to
me in to the sawmill.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
What would you tell him, well, I'd like to say,
what the heck Actually, I'd like to say about nine
different explinatis. 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,
(11:24):
from Maine over to Michigan down to Mississippi and Alabama,
it's having the same effect on these small little communities,
from 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?
Speaker 3 (11:46):
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.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
Was there wasn't an alternative?
Speaker 1 (12:02):
I mean at all?
Speaker 4 (12:03):
Did you vote for him all the way back to
twenty sixteen years?
Speaker 1 (12:06):
I voted for Trump all three times? Yep, I did.
But I literally was into voting booth and I wrapped
my knuckles and the Trump would hurt more. And that
was the one that I voted for because it was
just it was so disgusting and I hate to say that,
but that's literally how I made that choice.
Speaker 4 (12:25):
Okay, so you voted for the man.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
You both voted for the man.
Speaker 4 (12:29):
The man's policies have contributed that you're going out of business.
Do you have any regrets that.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
I voted for the man?
Speaker 3 (12:41):
After the break, how the closure of mackews Ferry Sawmill
could impact the area's economy, and how Wilson and Stephen
feel about President Trump and his policies today. For years,
(13:03):
Mackie's Faery 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 mills owners
say they couldn't come back from. As part of the
administration's efforts to bolster some industries affected by tariffs, the
US has prioritized bailouts for agriculture soybeans over assistance for
(13:27):
other industries like lumber.
Speaker 7 (13:29):
Tremendous amounts of the soybeans and other farm products are
going to be purchased immediately, starting.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
Comedialy 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.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Year Main Street and you're talking about Main Street in Columbus, Ohio.
You're not talking about Main Street and Ropert North Carolina.
I can say my relatives that are infarming, they don't
want to bail out, and I would be willing to
beat my industry colleagues in the hardwood lumber industry. They
don't want to bail out. They want access to their
(14:08):
markets and that door has been shut.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Well, I'm killing Tessen. I'm the Economic and Strategic Development
director from Washington County.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
In the county where Mackie's Ferry is located. The damage
from the mills closure has already been done.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
It is a big blow, especially now, you know after COVID.
Everybody kind of was install during COVID, but then just
to see one of your longest standing businesses closes doors.
You know, fifty guys are gonnaep men and women are
going to lose their jobs. Yeah, that is a blow.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
Kelly says. Back in the mid two thousands, the Reach
and lost around two hundred jobs when Canadian paper company
Domtar merged with Warehouser, the owner of a local pulp mill,
and the mill closure like this is another head. Mackie'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.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
It's not as a significant blow as the Warehouser blow
was for us, but it's still one of those ones
that's going to be felt in the community.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
So that was twenty years ago.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
We still haven't recovered from that. People want stability, and
then when you have major companies like Mackie's, who's been
here for over one hundred years, close, 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 rule and small communities are facing some of these
(15:30):
same things.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
The Supreme Court heard arguments earlier this month on the
legality of the tariffs. Lower courts have ruled that they
were illegal, and Sean says it's still unclear what restitution
would take place if the Supreme Court agrees.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
Not 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.
(16:05):
The story of tariffs is often the story of unintended consequences.
Donald Trump did not intend to cause the shutdown of
a saw mill 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 tariff's through history
(16:27):
has always been that they lead to retaliation and unintended consequences.
Do you have any regrets?
Speaker 1 (16:37):
I voted to the man, there are some things I
regret about voting for President Trump. Yes, one hundred percent.
Trade policies 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,
(17:01):
regardless of what they said on the campaign trail, I
would have voted for President's A.
Speaker 6 (17:06):
I don't necessarily have regrets. I mean, it came out,
but that's what he was going to fight for, and
knowingly that would affect us, probably.
Speaker 5 (17:19):
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 voting, I don't think I had a choice
to vote any other direction. I don't like the way
(17:43):
we're going about immigration strategy, if you will, but something had.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
To be done to control our borders.
Speaker 5 (17:51):
I think that's being accomplished now, having ice and everything else.
You know, a entire I don't even watch.
Speaker 6 (17:59):
News anymore, just because it's the same thing over and
over again, kind of like insanity.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
The last board at Mackey's Ferry Sawmill came off the
production line on September twenty ninth. Wilson and Stephen laid
off fifty people, some of whom had worked for the
mill for decades.
Speaker 4 (18:20):
Is this the last to do it?
Speaker 2 (18:22):
In here?
Speaker 1 (18:22):
This is kind of the last of it packaged up
and piled up. There'll be some we'll be able to
sail here and there, but it's just we're trying to
get the biggest chunks out of it right now.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Sean and Rachel visit it 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 Mackie's ferry.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
Said, you hadn't been here in a few weeks.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Yeah, there's not really a lot that I can do.
I learned it took a while because I'm not in
the sharpest tool initiad, 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, Let's say okay, look,
you know how to do your job and.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
Walk away, letting them do the thing.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Yeah, let them do their thing.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
The Jones brothers offer jobs to Mackie's ferry workers at
the other mill JW. Jones Lumber, about an hour away.
Only ten out of the original fifty took them up
on it.
Speaker 4 (19:26):
I read about economics. Economics is data, it's aggregate data,
and we often lose sight of the fact that economics
as people and economy is its people. It's not its economists.
Wilson Jones is one of those people.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
And then the other thing is is you're just going
to stand around, make yourself miserable, pull your head out
of you and try to, you know, make a difference.
Speaker 4 (19:50):
Way you can make a difference. Quit feeling sorry for yourself.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
That was.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
It's hard to see someone going through that and feeling
that that burden. It's the only way you can you
can you can describe that is that this is personal
for Wilson Jones.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Dura.
The show is hosted by me wanha and Sarah Holder.
Show is made by Aaron Edwards, David Fox, Eleanor, Harrison Dengate,
Patti hirsh Rachel Lewis, Krisky, Naomi, Julia Press, Tracy Samuelson,
Naomi Shaven, Alex Sagura, Julia Weaver, Young Young, and take Yasuzawa.
To get more from The Big Take and unlimited access
(20:38):
to all of Bloomberg dot Com, subscribe today at Bloomberg
dot Com Slash Podcast offer. Thanks for listening. We'll be
back on Monday.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Marcy step all this lumbers lumber that got out.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
When you walk into the J. W. Jones Lumber Company,
one of the first things you'll probably notice is how
noisy it is.
Speaker 4 (00:22):
You go in. You put in ear plugs. This place
is loud, right, and there's a kind of real cacoffiny.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
JW. Jones is a sawmill in Elizabeth City, North Carolina.
From stripping off the bark and sawing to trimming, sorting,
and drying the wooden kilns. Every day, the mill turns
dozens of logs into processed lumber boards, kind of used
in the visible wood in a house, like your baseboards
or stair treads. Bloomberg Economics reporter Sean Donnin took a
(00:55):
trip to North Carolina, to the Old North State with
our producer Rachel Lewis Chrisky to meet the Joneses, the
family that runs the business.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
It's a mill that has been there and in this
family since the nineteen thirties. The JW. Jones Lumber Company
focuses really on southern Pine.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
The Jones family has been in the lumber business since
eighteen eighty two. Today, brothers Wilson and Stephen co owned
two lumber mills. Stephen runs J W. Jones and Wilson
runs Mackie's Ferry sawmill. And while the JW Mill was
as loud as ever, Mackie's Ferry sounded very different.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
I've grown all my life in 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 unnervn as watching a
(01:57):
loved one take their breath.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
On July first, the brothers decided to close down Mackie's Ferry,
the tipping factor President Donald Trump's so called Liberation Day tariffs.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
When I say Liberation Day, I cannot put enough snark
in sarcasm in my voice, because we weren't liberated.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
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 fifty people who
worked at that mill were laid off.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Liberation Day did at the time it had them near
liberated me from our business, and in essence it has
I'm bitter about that.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
After Trump and ound sweeping tariffs on April second, several
countries responded with retaliatory tariffs, including and that hit Mackie's
Fairy hard Until recently, seventy to eighty percent of the
wood coming from the Mackie's Ferry sawmill was going to
China and Vietnam, a primary market for US hardwood, while
most of what comes out of the brothers' other mill, softwood,
(03:16):
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 Macki's. About a third of
their overall business revenue disappeared.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
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 the lot
of rural America right now.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Since 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
US actually lost forty two thousand manufacturing jobs.
Speaker 4 (03:59):
They are the first generation in five to have to
close something down in this lumber industry. Wilson's a man
in the sixties. He's a storyteller, but he's also a
proud man, and he had tears in his eyes as
he was describing this.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
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 twenty four to seven,
and 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
(04:35):
wind blow.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
I'm David Gerrutt, and this is the Big Take from
Bloomberg News Today. On the show, we head to North
Carolina to understand how President Trump's trade war played a
role in the closure of a family run sawmill, and
how his policies are affecting one of the oldest industries
in America. The Jones family has bet in the lumber
(05:09):
business in North Carolina going back nearly one hundred and
fifty years.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
I've heard my mom tell stories about when I was born.
They brought me home from the hospital and went knocking
on the door, and four big old saw meal guys
out here, you know, dirty and everything like that. So head,
miss Margaret, we want to come see the little boss man.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Wilson Jones's memories of growing up are full of sawdust,
childhood games and wood chippings.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
We'd come out here and we'd sweep, or we'd throw
sawdust into bar, or we'd play in the shaven's.
Speaker 5 (05:40):
House when we were a little He's got a scarbody's cheeks.
Speaker 6 (05:46):
He's older.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
He used to beat up on me.
Speaker 5 (05:48):
So I stabbed him with a pitch for and I
can go out there and show you where.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
He did it too.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
The US lumber industry as we know it today started
when settlers in America were still under British rule. Back
in the early seventeen hundreds, North Carolina alone was producing
over fifty thousand British pounds worth of lumber annually. That's
equivalent to about eleven million US dollars a year today.
North Carolina became the primary source of naval stores, the
(06:18):
material used to build and maintain British ships. After the
US won its independence and expanded farther west. The country's
forests would fuel the industry for centuries.
Speaker 7 (06:30):
If they hadn't found what here, there wouldn't have been
in America. In the building of America would play a
mighty part.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
But consumption of lumber in the US peaked in the
late nineteen eighties that it's been dipping ever since. That's
led to a steady decline in the number of US sawmills,
many of which are small, family owned operations, and American
consumer tastes have shifted toward cheaper furniture made from particle
board MDF or laminet commonly used by company is like
(07:00):
Ikea and Amazon.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
My wife and I have a young couple that we've
talked to. They were so happy that they got a
new sofa from the new house from Amazon for four
hundred dollars. But I understand, you know that people like akia,
which is made, you know, with particle board and putting together,
compared to you know, a custom built cabinet or something
(07:23):
like that. I 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 a government policy making us obsolete.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Even before Trump's tariffs were on the scene, US hardwood
lumber was still in a tough spot. Mackie's Fairy Mill,
which the Jones family bought in the nineteen eighties, initially
served North Carolina's furniture industry, but when that industry started
facing competition from China and going offshore in the ninety
ten nineties, their market changed and by the early two
(08:03):
thousands they were sending most of their lumber overseas. By
two thousand and eight, 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.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
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 port in China.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
For a while, that approach was working. According to Wilson,
the Mackie's Ferry Mill was regularly shipping millions of dollars
in hardwood to their biggest customers in China and Vietnam,
the Joneses had moved with the times. By twenty seventeen,
China became the largest single market for exported lumber from
the US, followed by Mexico and Canada. And when the
(08:59):
US imposed an escalating series of tariffs on China in
twenty eighteen during Trump's first term, the jones Is managed
to weather the fallout, even as China retaliated.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
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 in our
customer they bore half of it. And that was kind
of an industry wide thing.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
But Trump's second term tariffs were even more aggressive. On
April second, the President announced a higher thirty four percent
tariff on Chinese imports. China, along with several other US
trading partners, retaliated again. It would kick off a rapidly
escalating trade war that sent shock waves through global markets.
Speaker 7 (09:43):
I said, where are we now. We're at one hundred
and forty five percent. I said, woll that's high.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
That's hig.
Speaker 7 (09:49):
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.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
For American hardwood, the reciprocal tariffs got as high as
one one hundred and twenty five percent.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
What took you over the edge here? What caused you
to shut this down?
Speaker 1 (10:07):
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
(10:27):
there are real capital issues with being able to modernize
and being able to modernize efficiently.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
But the final nail in the coffin was.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
When we couldn't sell the lumber.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
When President Trump imposed tariffs. Back in April, wood from
Mackie's Ferry worth some five hundred thousand dollars was on
its way to China as part of a regular shipment.
Within days, that shipment was facing tariffs worth more than
the wood itself.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
President Trump pulled up here today and you walked to
me in to the sawmill.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
What would you tell him, well, I'd like to say,
what the heck Actually, I'd like to say about nine
different explinatis. 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,
(11:24):
from Maine over to Michigan down to Mississippi and Alabama,
it's having the same effect on these small little communities,
from 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?
Speaker 3 (11:46):
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.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
Was there wasn't an alternative?
Speaker 1 (12:02):
I mean at all?
Speaker 4 (12:03):
Did you vote for him all the way back to
twenty sixteen years?
Speaker 1 (12:06):
I voted for Trump all three times? Yep, I did.
But I literally was into voting booth and I wrapped
my knuckles and the Trump would hurt more. And that
was the one that I voted for because it was
just it was so disgusting and I hate to say that,
but that's literally how I made that choice.
Speaker 4 (12:25):
Okay, so you voted for the man.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
You both voted for the man.
Speaker 4 (12:29):
The man's policies have contributed that you're going out of business.
Do you have any regrets that.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
I voted for the man?
Speaker 3 (12:41):
After the break, how the closure of mackews Ferry Sawmill
could impact the area's economy, and how Wilson and Stephen
feel about President Trump and his policies today. For years,
(13:03):
Mackie's Faery 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 mills owners
say they couldn't come back from. As part of the
administration's efforts to bolster some industries affected by tariffs, the
US has prioritized bailouts for agriculture soybeans over assistance for
(13:27):
other industries like lumber.
Speaker 7 (13:29):
Tremendous amounts of the soybeans and other farm products are
going to be purchased immediately, starting.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
Comedialy 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.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Year Main Street and you're talking about Main Street in Columbus, Ohio.
You're not talking about Main Street and Ropert North Carolina.
I can say my relatives that are infarming, they don't
want to bail out, and I would be willing to
beat my industry colleagues in the hardwood lumber industry. They
don't want to bail out. They want access to their
(14:08):
markets and that door has been shut.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Well, I'm killing Tessen. I'm the Economic and Strategic Development
director from Washington County.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
In the county where Mackie's Ferry is located. The damage
from the mills closure has already been done.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
It is a big blow, especially now, you know after COVID.
Everybody kind of was install during COVID, but then just
to see one of your longest standing businesses closes doors.
You know, fifty guys are gonnaep men and women are
going to lose their jobs. Yeah, that is a blow.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
Kelly says. Back in the mid two thousands, the Reach
and lost around two hundred jobs when Canadian paper company
Domtar merged with Warehouser, the owner of a local pulp mill,
and the mill closure like this is another head. Mackie'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.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
It's not as a significant blow as the Warehouser blow
was for us, but it's still one of those ones
that's going to be felt in the community.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
So that was twenty years ago.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
We still haven't recovered from that. People want stability, and
then when you have major companies like Mackie's, who's been
here for over one hundred years, close, 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 rule and small communities are facing some of these
(15:30):
same things.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
The Supreme Court heard arguments earlier this month on the
legality of the tariffs. Lower courts have ruled that they
were illegal, and Sean says it's still unclear what restitution
would take place if the Supreme Court agrees.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
Not 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.
(16:05):
The story of tariffs is often the story of unintended consequences.
Donald Trump did not intend to cause the shutdown of
a saw mill 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 tariff's through history
(16:27):
has always been that they lead to retaliation and unintended consequences.
Do you have any regrets?
Speaker 1 (16:37):
I voted to the man, there are some things I
regret about voting for President Trump. Yes, one hundred percent.
Trade policies 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,
(17:01):
regardless of what they said on the campaign trail, I
would have voted for President's A.
Speaker 6 (17:06):
I don't necessarily have regrets. I mean, it came out,
but that's what he was going to fight for, and
knowingly that would affect us, probably.
Speaker 5 (17:19):
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 voting, I don't think I had a choice
to vote any other direction. I don't like the way
(17:43):
we're going about immigration strategy, if you will, but something had.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
To be done to control our borders.
Speaker 5 (17:51):
I think that's being accomplished now, having ice and everything else.
You know, a entire I don't even watch.
Speaker 6 (17:59):
News anymore, just because it's the same thing over and
over again, kind of like insanity.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
The last board at Mackey's Ferry Sawmill came off the
production line on September twenty ninth. Wilson and Stephen laid
off fifty people, some of whom had worked for the
mill for decades.
Speaker 4 (18:20):
Is this the last to do it?
Speaker 2 (18:22):
In here?
Speaker 1 (18:22):
This is kind of the last of it packaged up
and piled up. There'll be some we'll be able to
sail here and there, but it's just we're trying to
get the biggest chunks out of it right now.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Sean and Rachel visit it 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 Mackie's ferry.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
Said, you hadn't been here in a few weeks.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Yeah, there's not really a lot that I can do.
I learned it took a while because I'm not in
the sharpest tool initiad, 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, Let's say okay, look,
you know how to do your job and.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
Walk away, letting them do the thing.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Yeah, let them do their thing.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
The Jones brothers offer jobs to Mackie's ferry workers at
the other mill JW. Jones Lumber, about an hour away.
Only ten out of the original fifty took them up
on it.
Speaker 4 (19:26):
I read about economics. Economics is data, it's aggregate data,
and we often lose sight of the fact that economics
as people and economy is its people. It's not its economists.
Wilson Jones is one of those people.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
And then the other thing is is you're just going
to stand around, make yourself miserable, pull your head out
of you and try to, you know, make a difference.
Speaker 4 (19:50):
Way you can make a difference. Quit feeling sorry for yourself.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
That was.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
It's hard to see someone going through that and feeling
that that burden. It's the only way you can you
can you can describe that is that this is personal
for Wilson Jones.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Dura.
The show is hosted by me wanha and Sarah Holder.
Show is made by Aaron Edwards, David Fox, Eleanor, Harrison Dengate,
Patti hirsh Rachel Lewis, Krisky, Naomi, Julia Press, Tracy Samuelson,
Naomi Shaven, Alex Sagura, Julia Weaver, Young Young, and take Yasuzawa.
To get more from The Big Take and unlimited access
(20:38):
to all of Bloomberg dot Com, subscribe today at Bloomberg
dot Com Slash Podcast offer. Thanks for listening. We'll be
back on Monday.
Hosts And Creators
Sarah Holder
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