President Donald Trump said on Friday his administration will conduct a “major” tariff investigation on furniture entering the United States, a step toward imposing higher duties on a sector already seeing tariff-fueled price increases.

“Furniture coming from other Countries into the United States will be Tariffed at a Rate yet to be determined,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

Furniture retailer RH — previously known as Restoration Hardware — shares fell 7.5% in after-hours trading on Trump’s announcement.

Trump said the investigation will be completed within the next 50 days but other national security probes have taken significantly longer than that. A White House official confirmed that it would be conducted under the Section 232 national security statute.

The probe could serve as a backstop legal basis for existing tariffs if a federal appeals court strikes down “reciprocal” duties that Trump imposed on a broad range of U.S. trading partners in April, as well as import taxes imposed in February against China, Canada and Mexico.

“This will bring the Furniture Business back to North Carolina, South Carolina, Michigan, and States all across the Union,” Trump said.

Furniture and wood products manufacturing — which employed 1.2 million people in 1979 — has fallen from 681,000 in 2000 to 340,000 today, according to government statistics.

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The United States imported about $25.5 billion in furniture in 2024, up 7% over 2023, with about 60% of those imports coming from Vietnam and China, according to Furniture Today, a trade publication.

New tariffs on imports from furniture-producing countries helped push up consumer prices for home furnishings by a steep 0.7% in July, according to Commerce Department data, though overall consumer price inflation was restrained by lower gasoline prices.

The American Home Furnishings Alliance, a trade group representing domestic furniture manufacturers and importers, including many companies that do both, had no immediate comment on Trump’s announcement.

But the High Point, North Carolina-based AHFA in April led an industry coalition in opposing new tariffs under Trump’s ongoing Section 232 investigation into lumber and wood products imports.

“As a strictly legal matter, there is no rational relationship between imports of wood products or furniture and the national security of the United States,” the group said in written comments to the Commerce Department.

“Second, no amount of tariffs will bring back American furniture manufacturing back to its prior levels. Tariffs will harm manufacturing still being done in the United States.”

Furniture would be the latest imported products targeted for a national security investigation by the Trump administration. On Thursday, it announced a national security probe into imported wind turbines and has previously targeted copper and other metals.

The department has opened numerous probes into the national security ramifications of imports of airplanes, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, heavy trucks, timber and lumber, critical minerals and drones.

The European Union won some relief from these potential new Section 232 tariffs as part of a joint statement on Thursday fleshing out their trade deal. The two sides agreed to limit any new U.S. tariffs on EU pharmaceuticals, lumber and semiconductors to the general 15% rate applied to most products from the bloc and will shield EU aircraft and parts, generic pharmaceuticals and drug chemical precursors from all new tariffs.

(Reporting by Ismail Shakil and Bhargav Acharya; editing by Ryan Patrick Jones, Caitlin Webber and Diane Craft)

A tour bus carrying more than 50 people veered out of control and rolled over on an Upstate New York highway on Friday, killing at least five people and injuring dozens of others, authorities said.

At least one child was among the dead, according to trooper James O’Callaghan, a spokesperson for the New York State Police. He told reporters near the scene that most of the passengers were Asian or of Asian descent, including Chinese, Indians and Filipinos.

The accident took place on Interstate 90, part of the New York State Thruway, in Pembroke, New York, about 30 miles (48 km) east of Buffalo, while the bus was en route from Niagara Falls to New York City.

The National Transportation Safety Board was sending a team to investigate the accident, the agency said.

Multiple passengers ended up trapped in the wreckage and had to be extricated, while others were thrown from the bus when it rolled over across the highway before coming to rest on its side in a ditch along the shoulder of the road, O’Callaghan said.

The driver, who survived the accident, lost control while the bus was moving at “full speed,” he said, causing the vehicle to career into the median and then flip over. No other vehicles were involved.

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The driver was cooperating with investigators, O’Callaghan said, and police were in contact with the bus company, which was not publicly identified.

The bus was carrying 51 passengers, not counting the driver, and every person aboard suffered some kind of injury, O’Callaghan said.

An online statement by state police said “several fatalities” were confirmed. New York Governor Kathy Hochul said on the social platform X that police had confirmed that “five lives were tragically lost.”

After the crash, authorities closed the highway in both directions, causing massive traffic delays at the onset of one of the last weekends of the summer vacation season.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles and Rich McKay in Atlanta; Additional reporting by David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Frank McGurty, Cynthia Osterman and Sandra Maler)