B.C. business moving all operations to U.S. but says tariffs not to blame [Video]

After nearly 50 years in B.C., a furniture company is packing up and moving to the U.S., putting 170 people out of work.

Prepac Manufacturing is closing its Delta plant and moving all operations to its North Carolina location.

The employees’ union believes the Donald Trump tariff war is at least partly to blame, but the company insists that is not the case.

“We’ve been in bargaining all of last year through many months of negotiations,” Gavin McGarrigle, Unifor’s Western Regional Director, told Global News.

“We reached a deal in mid-December and we had no notification that they were planning to leave only 60 days later. The only thing that changed was the Trump administration was brought in, we saw the chaos caused by these tariff threats, and now we see this private hedge fund taking this opportunity to abandon Canadian workers, abandon the people that built up the value …