As the world is watching how President Trump's tariff threats to virtually the entire world will be playing out, some companies in the US are far from happy about his "America first" policy. Importers stand to lose much.
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00:00A stream of sweetness in increasingly bitter business conditions.
00:05Erin Calvabacci has run the specialty chocolate manufacturing business for 18 years.
00:10But the prospect of tariffs forcing her to pay more to make her products has her worried for the future.
00:16For chocolate, from the Ivory Coast.
00:19For molding cups, from Italy.
00:21For packaging, from China.
00:23Tariffs hurt because it is a punishment.
00:26We can't change where the chocolate's coming from.
00:29I can't change where the sugar is grown.
00:32And I can't change where the cup that is made for my peanut butter cups is also produced.
00:38Those are companies that just don't exist here.
00:41And if you take that away, if you add to that, it just means my product may not be able to be around anymore.
00:51For now, she's trying to control her costs, buying smaller amounts of inputs,
00:55keeping the gap between what she spends and what she earns as narrow as possible.
01:00But it also means she's unable to benefit from paying less for bulk purchases.
01:04It's one of the many trade-offs she's making as a small business owner.
01:08But she doesn't know how long she can keep making them.
01:11If the tariffs really drastically strangle my business and my affordability of running this business,
01:18then I will have to look at ending this and then moving on to whatever the next chapter of my life is going to be.
01:26And that's not ideally what I want to be doing, especially because it's not just me going away.
01:32It's these jobs going away.
01:35It's the people that we then sell into.
01:37Those are businesses that, because of our product, they have salespeople selling the product.
01:43It's just the trickle-down effect that really is alarming because it really just feels like it's looming.
01:50Just like Erin Calvabachi's operation, 99.9% of businesses in America are small businesses.
01:57Collectively, they employ nearly 46% of American workers and make up nearly 44% of economic output.
02:04But some proprietors say tariffs would just be the latest in a series of stumbling blocks they've already had to overcome.
02:10We dealt with a pandemic. We dealt with an increase in the price of raw materials.
02:16We've dealt with an increase in the minimum wage rate.
02:21So this is just going to be another challenge that we're going to have to deal with and, in this case, possibly pass the cost on to our customers.
02:30Marian Horniak owns a kitchenware shop, sourcing her products from around the world too.
02:36She worries that even just talk of tariffs could be enough to keep customers away.
02:41I just think the threat of imposing the tariffs is just so knee-jerk.
02:46It's kind of fear-mongering because, whether it happens or not, it's already been presented as a possibility.
02:51And some people take that as, you know, it's definitely going to happen.
02:56Whether it is or not, people are already, you know, fearing it.
03:00And that can have an effect on our bottom line.
03:04You know, like, oh, you know, I'm not going to go buy anything because of these tariffs when it, in reality, hasn't even been imposed yet.
03:12So I think it's already a thing, even though it's not a thing.
03:17If or when tariffs materialize, what will they be applied to and by how much?
03:22The so-far unanswered question is making it difficult for small businesses to prepare themselves.
03:27But once they do know, and tariffs do start to bite, the question shifts to an existential one for many.
03:33It's whether they would be able to survive, and at what cost.