‘I wanted to throw up’: Small business owners bristle at cost of new Trump policy

The signs of a contracting economy are hitting small businesses hard, even as President Donald Trump announces, and then delays, another massive 145 percent tariff on a U.S. trading partner.

The Wall Street Journal reports the owner of a San Francisco card-game company was recently driven to cash in his money-market funds, while the founder of a Colorado tent-making company is having to seek investors. Another Colorado company that makes watches and jewelry is delaying signing a new office lease, and a New Hampshire company, 5 Star North, had to reduce it’s 12-person staff to five—with three of those already seeking new employment.

“Nobody in power seems to care about small business,” said 5 Star North owner Scott Anderson, who assembles various products from Chinese parts importers. “At this point the only option I see is selling out the rest of what we have and shutting our doors.”

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Small businesses don’t have the resources or margins to weather economic unpredictability as the president announces and rescinds tariff after tariff. Many only a single factory site, or they sell only to a handful a handful of suppliers. This would make switching production to countries not targeted Trump difficult even if the president did not pick and choose and update tariffs by the week.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the advocacy group Small Business Majority called on the Trump administration to provide an exclusion from the new tariffs for small-business importers, but WSJ reports Trump dismissed calls for relief.

“They’re not going to need it,” Trump said. “They’re going to make so much money—if you build your product here.”

That’s not the way Think Tank owners Lisa Popowich and Jonathan Stein saw it when they opened their manufacturing parts invoice from China earlier this month.

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“I wanted to throw up,” Popowich told WSJ, after seeing a bill showing tariffs as high as 161% per item, adding $8,752 to a $5,649 order.

Other business owners like ASM Games co-founder Alfred Mai say he is paralyzed at the choice of either paying the tariffs to get inventory or risk running out of inventory.

Read the full Wall Street Journal report here.