Bush Industries is closing, leaving more than 200 people without work in the south of the county. In a region that has already absorbed losses from Truck-Lite and Serta, this is not just another closure. It’s a blow to the foundation of our community.

And once again, instead of sitting with that reality and doing the hard work to solve it, our Republican leadership is reaching for a familiar script.

Blame New York State.

Senator George Borrello and Assemblyman Andrew Molitor both pointed to “burdensome regulations” and the cost of doing business in New York as the explanation. That argument is politically convenient. It is not what the company itself said.

According to eSolutions Furniture Group, the Canadian parent company of Bush Industries, the bankruptcy was driven by a combination of factors: tariffs imposed by the U.S. government, declining post-pandemic demand, increased offshore competition, and ongoing cash constraints.

That matters because if you start with the wrong diagnosis, you guarantee the wrong response.

Bush Industries was already under pressure. The furniture industry has been hollowed out for decades by global competition. Consumers–often out of necessity–buy cheaper imported goods. Domestic manufacturers, carrying higher labor and material costs, operate on thinner margins. That was the landscape well before this year.

Then demand shifted. During the pandemic, people invested in home offices. That surge didn’t last. When demand pulled back, so did revenue.

And then tariffs hit.

Tariffs are taxes on imports paid by U.S. businesses. Companies absorb them first, but the cost moves–increasing prices, squeezing profit margins, and forcing decisions about whether a business can continue operating at all. In a strong company, tariffs can be managed. In a company already facing cash constraints, they accelerate the fall. That is basic business math.

None of this means tariffs are always bad. Used strategically, they can support domestic industry. Early American leaders used them that way to build manufacturing capacity.

But broad, arbitrary, and poorly targeted tariffs don’t strengthen fragile companies. They expose them.

And that’s where the conversation in Chautauqua County is failing.

Instead of asking:

– What industries can we realistically support and grow here now?

– What supply chains can we support?

– What workforce investments could make us competitive?

We are being offered a recycled talking point about Albany.

Even locally, the response raises more questions than answers. County Executive PJ Wendel said that offers were made to purchase the company but were rejected. But in a bankruptcy process, decisions are driven by creditors and court oversight, with a mandate to maximize recovery–not preserve local jobs. That reality should shape what we ask for and how we respond.

Because hope is not a strategy.

Chautauqua County is not losing jobs because of a single policy or a single place. We are losing them because we have not built a coordinated, realistic economic strategy that matches where the market actually is–and because too many decisions are still being shaped by what fits a political narrative, not what will actually work here.

Until we do, closures like this will keep happening–no matter who we choose to blame.

More than 200 jobs don’t disappear on paper. They disappear in households.

They show up as a mortgage that can’t be paid. As a second job that wasn’t supposed to be necessary. As a young person deciding not to come back after college because there’s nothing here to come back to.

And while families in this county do that math at their kitchen tables, our Republican leadership is still playing politics.

We deserve better than talking points. We deserve leadership that is honest about what is happening, clear about what can be done, and willing to do the hard work of building an economy that actually strengthens our communities.

If we don’t change direction, this won’t be the last time we have this conversation. It will be the next company, the next household, and the next set of families left to figure it out on their own.

Julie Jackson-Forsberg is a Jamestown resident.