{"id":5215,"date":"2025-05-12T00:50:50","date_gmt":"2025-05-12T07:50:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abovecloud.xyz\/?p=5215"},"modified":"2025-05-12T00:51:14","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T07:51:14","slug":"small-business-owners-on-damage-from-trumps-tariffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abovecloud.xyz\/?p=5215","title":{"rendered":"Small business owners on damage from Trump’s tariffs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Beth Benike is a mom, a veteran, and a small business owner \u2013 and she’s sounding the alarm. “I’ve been telling all of my friends and family that anything you want for Christmas, to get it right now, especially if you’re buying for children. If you are buying any baby products at all, get them while they’re here, because they’re gonna be gone.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After a decade serving in the Army, stationed in Bosnia, Kuwait, Iraq and beyond, Benike started Busy Baby, a Minnesota company that designs and sells placemats and utensils for babies and toddlers. All her products are made in China. And now, those products are subject to President Trump’s 145% tax on Chinese imports.\u00a0

“We have three months’ worth of products sitting at the factory,” Benike said. “And now, in order to get it here, we need $230,000 on top of what we’ve already paid for the product, just to get it in the country.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Can you afford that?” I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Oh God, no,” Benike replied.

“So, what do you do?”

“First, I sat on my kitchen floor and cried,” Benike said. “And when I was on the floor in the kitchen, my son came in to show me something or tell me something, and he saw me sitting there, crying. My eight-year-old son. \u2026 And he put his arms around me and just hugged me. And, like, I realized I’m not gonna let him see this. This is not what we’re gonna be.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tariffs hit just after Benike struck a deal to sell Busy Baby products at Target and Walmart. To produce enough inventory, she took out a loan from the Small Business Administration. “That loan is partially SBA-financed, and then partially leveraged against my house,” Benike said. “So, if I can’t stay in business and pay those loans, I lose the house.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inside Benike’s warehouse, this is what’s left:

Once this inventory is sold, Benike said, “then we’re out of product. Then we’re sold out. We’ve got nothing more coming in.”

One of the retailers Benike supplies is Little Roo’s, in Chaska, Minnesota. Owner Marissa Held-Nordling says she has seen shopper behavior change since tariffs were introduced. For the first time ever, she is allowing customers to stockpile baby registry gifts, like Benike’s Busy Baby mats. That way, family and friends can still get what they need, often for baby showers months away.

“You can’t just do a registry anymore, because the products aren’t guaranteed that it’s still going to be on the shelf,” said Held-Nordling. “So, at this point I’m allowing people to come in and fill a bin, and they can get their exact colors \u2026 and then I close the bin and I take this product off my website.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the U.S. and China begin trade talks, economists still expect most goods to get more expensive \u2013 or even go out of stock, from clothing to electronics to toys. Yale’s Budget Lab says tariffs could add nearly $5,000 a year to families’ household expenses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n