President Donald Trump’s continued roll out of a wide array of tariffs is rattling small business owners already dealing with tight profit margins.
Trump on Monday announced a 25% tariff on steel and aluminum and promised more import duties to come. Last week, the administration imposed a 10% tariff on Chinese goods coming into the U.S.
Sandra Payne, owner of Denver Concrete Vibrator, imports steel and other raw materials for her business. Her company makes tools to settle concrete and other industrial tools. Most of the steel the company uses comes from China, and she gets material from Canada and Mexico, too.
“Small businesses run on very small margins. And so a 25% increase in any product is going to hurt,” she said. “And we can’t just raise our prices every time the cost goes up to us. So we are losing a lot of money.”
In addition to the steel and China tariffs, other tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods have been temporarily put on hol d, but they could be implemented later. So, small business owners still need a strategy for mitigating the costs of the tariffs if they go into effect.
Across the border, Julie Bednarski-Malik runs a snack company, Healthy Crunch, based in Mississauga, Ontario. She sells her products in both Canadian and U.S. retail stores, and said she might have to raise prices depending on how the tariffs unfold. But she’s still in wait-and-see mode as tariffs loom.
“I know that this is going to come into effect, but we’re still unclear exactly the timing and the percentage and what sort of commodities are going to be impacted,” she said. “We hope that, you know, the U.S. and Canada could work together to find some sort of resolution because we are such close allies and trading partners.”
Bar Zakheim, owns Better Place Design & Build, a contracting business in San Diego that specializes in building accessible dwelling units, or ADUs. He said he is especially worried about lumber.
“This stuff has already been getting more expensive over the past few years due to supply chain shocks and wildfires, and a huge proportion of our lumber comes from Canada,” he said. “These tariffs are going to make everything we do considerably more expensive, at a time when the high-priced housing market and high interest rates are already cutting into our bottom line.”
Payne, of Denver Concrete Vibrator, added that the tariffs will likely have a domino effect.
”I sell to other businesses, I don’t sell to the end user. So everything that happens to me is going to happen all the way down the line. It’s going to impact everyone down the line.”
