Whether you're grabbing a plate lunch from a local drive-in or having a family picnic on the beach, chances are you might be using a takeout container from Mālama Eco Products.
ʻIlio Products is a Hawaiʻi-based importer of pet and eco-friendly products, including the Mālama Eco line of compostable takeout containers.
David Pang co-founded the company in 2008. He spoke with The Conversation about how changes to the Chinese tariffs are affecting business.
The tariff news was unfolding in April while he was on a flight bound for Shanghai to purchase machinery to expand local manufacturing in Hawaiʻi. He said the proposed tariff fluctuated from 35% to 125%. It then jumped to 145% just before he met with a manufacturer, making it economically unfeasible.
“No one's making machines here, so we have to buy it from somewhere… We were gonna take leftover waste products from the fishery and things like that, and produce it into a dog treat made in Hawaiʻi, and sell it around the world.”
Pang said all of his supply for the restaurant containers comes from abroad. He plans to travel to four countries in the next six weeks — partly to look for new supply chains and also to secure current ones.
“We’re on an island. We get 95% of our stuff from somewhere else,” he said. “The worst part of this, when I talk to my suppliers abroad, they're like, ‘We all got COVID, there was nothing anyone could control, but this is all self-inflicted.’"
“I get when you say you want to bring manufacturing back to the United States. But I have two issues with that. One is, we don't have the capacity as a government, as a country, as infrastructure, to do it. We don't. Number two, who's going to work that job? I know I'm not. I'm not going to work the assembly line. Anybody else I know, they're not going to work that assembly line."
This interview aired on The Conversation on May 6, 2025. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Hannah Kaʻiulani Coburn adapted this story for the web.
