Local Cleveland company worries about tariffs

CLEVELAND, Tenn. (WDEF) — A local business in Cleveland is worried about President Trump’s Tariffs.

Scale trains is a local model train company based in Cleveland Tennessee.

They are worried that the Tariffs on China could financially cripple their company.

Their current prices on their trains vary, but mainly run around $300.

They worry their prices could increase to almost $500 just to cover the additional tariff cost.

Scale Trains manufactures their model trains in China, and they say they physically can’t move their operations to the U.S

Bruce Underwood is the vice president of operations of Scale Trains.

He says, “Right now there is not one place, there is not one factory that can do what we do. Not only that there is not a factory that does it nor is there a supply chain that gets the parts, the metal, the wheel sets, or any of the things to make what we do as it stands right now. It would take millions of dollars and years to do that. It is just not feasible to do that as a small company or as an industry to finance that.”

Scale Trains employs about 30 people here in Cleveland and with the tariffs they worry about layoffs.

They also worry about the toy industry in general and how these tariffs could cripple that industry.

Scale Train wanted to get the word out that they believe in a free market but these tariffs will hurt their business drastically