Photo-Illustration: Curbed; Photo: Lori Van Buren/Albany Times Union/Getty Images
Seth Dankman was trying to build a gazebo. The client, a townhouse owner in Williamsburg, had a vision of a rooftop greenhouse for morning yoga and coffee. Dankman had been hired on in January and the initial estimate for the project was around $55,000 — $40,000 for materials alone. But by the time he started placing aluminum orders in April, Trump had kicked off his chaotic tariff spree, and the cost of materials jumped to almost $50,000. This is a tricky thing to have to tell someone, even if that someone has the sort of funds to build a yoga gazebo on their roof. “Some of our clients are understanding the situation; some of them are just expecting us to eat the cost,” says Dankman, who leads a general contracting company called Design 2 Build. “It’s very touchy.”
For now, Trump’s saber rattling has settled down to a 90-day, across-the-board tariff of 10 percent for most countries (with the notable exception of China), but even that can quickly become a surcharge of many thousands of dollars. Navigating the uncertainty of the current market, particularly for a wealthy client base accustomed to a certain kind of frictionlessness, requires some finesse. Managing expectations. Managing personalities. “Clients are like, ‘Can we buy this yesterday?’” says Keren Richter, co-founder and principal at White Arrow, a boutique interior-design studio in Union Square.
Until recently, vendors’ quotes for costs of goods would be honored for around a month, but unpredictable economic currents have often shaved that time down to five days. Rather than waiting for costs to stabilize, contractors and designers tell me that some customers are now treating their renovation projects like a track meet. “In past times, they had phased some of the purchasing based on when people get paid or certain milestones of construction,” Richter says, “but now they really are eager for us to purchase the entirety of the home at once.”
“I think these clients can absorb 10 to 20 percent in costs, but other folks may have to eliminate a bathroom, make adjustments,” she adds. “We’re trying to be transparent that costs are going to be increasing. It’s tricky to plan because some vendors don’t want to guarantee quotes for that long.”
Customs brokers are also finding creative workarounds for tariffs already in effect. “We were importing a lamp — a special lamp,” Kevin Baker, the studio manager at Studio Mellone, tells me: “Artwork by a famous artist, but it is functioning as a lamp.”
The thing is, lights are subject to the new tariffs; as an exception, most artwork is not. Whether the special lamp’s core purpose was to illuminate rooms or the eyes of admirers became a materially relevant question. The studio’s customs broker gave Baker a call: “Hey, Kevin, have the vendor change this and specify on the invoice that this is actually a piece of artwork because essentially you’re gonna save $3,200,” she told him.
Customers and designers less practiced in the dark arts of import duty filings are turning to domestic vendors. Josh Greene, an interior designer who frequently sources products from flea markets in Paris, told me that he had one recent client say: “Hey, we should just buy the antiques locally or here in New York.”
But even that has its problems. European flea markets aren’t just ripe with shiny objects to complete the homes of wealthy New Yorkers, they’re also typically much cheaper. “A Jean Michel Frank lamp could be double the cost over here instead of purchasing overseas,” says Camille Woerner, procurement manager at Julie Hillman Design. “That 10 percent tariff is still most likely less than what we’d be buying here.”
As tastemakers continue to scour internationally for their clients, many are also considering how they’ll present them with a flurry of new surcharges once the bill does arrive. Greene suspects that bigger operations with wider margins, like rug companies, may be able to absorb cost increases while maintaining their prices — gambling that tariff policies will fade later this year.
Dankman, for his part, thought he’d be able to reach an understanding with his gazebo client, charging closer to $65,000. Then he got a phone call from a vendor. The price of glass, like aluminum, would be going up by 10 percent, increasing the costs another several thousand dollars. “We may pull the order,” he tells me, sounding defeated. After such a price jump, “You would just say, ‘Forget it, you know, I can go with a tent.’”