Gennadiy Tsygan knows how expensive it is to build a home in the United States. That’s why he imported almost everything for his dream house from China.
Most of his home fixtures were imported directly from over two dozen factories, and Tsygan — an engineer in Baltimore — flew halfway around the world in 2024 to choose some of those products.
Actually the only reason this is currently viable is because lots of these Chinese manufacturers know some good tricks to bypass the current tariff bonanza.
Otherwise, lots of smaller quality home builders have been doing this for decades. They usually fly their client to China to tour around for a week or two, select all the stuff they want, and package it, and then have it shipped to the build site, which still comes in quite a bit cheaper than buying lower quality Chinese imports from the local market.
Granted, it only works if you have experience in home building or have enough cash to actually warrant furnishing a house with top quality stuff. But the last builder I talked to said the client spent about 20k on stuff that would have otherwise costed as much as 75k in the US, despite the more expensive option most likely being an inferior product imported from China.
Seriously, go into any existing furniture store. It is basically rebranded Temu junk at insane prices. The way its going, I’m honestly surprised everyone hasn’t just given up and started using folding ABS plastic everywhere.