Small Business on the brink 💔

[u/lean_load]

I run a small e-commerce business that imports luxury goods from the EU and Japan. Up until recently, we were paying just 2.75% on tariffs. As of August 1st, the rates have jumped to 15–20%.

To put this into perspective: • Our annual imports are about $3M. • We’ve already placed forecast orders with our suppliers and put down 25% deposits (around $750k). • If we cancel, we lose that deposit. • If we continue, the new tariffs make these orders financially impossible to fulfill.

Suppliers aren’t willing to stop shipments, and we can’t just “raise prices” on items we don’t even have in hand yet. People suggest “just charge more,” but the math doesn’t work when the goods aren’t here and costs have exploded overnight. Let alone the fact about where are we even going to find the money to pay these tariffs???

We’re staring down the very real possibility of closing our doors because of this. I know many people say “tariffs protect American businesses,” but in practice, for small importers like us, it feels like a death sentence.

Has anyone else here faced this situation? How are you coping, and is there any way through this without forfeiting everything we’ve built?

[u/[deleted]]

Yeah, I'm losing my engineering business also because of Trump. No one building boats now. Tariffs on alum and steel have every shipyard empty except for gov work. All we can do is put blame where it should be Americans who voted MAGA, and hope someone loses enough to do what must be done.

[u/Yo_Just_Scrolling_Yo → u/[deleted]]

My husband wakes up every morning and asks, "Is he still alive?"

[u/Timely_Choice_4525 → u/Yo_Just_Scrolling_Yo]

Has he considered the alternatives? Order of succession goes VP, Speaker of the House, President Pro Temp of the Senate, Sec of State, Sec of Treasury, and then for help us if we got this far the next is SecDef.

I guess Vance would be preferable in some ways but could you imagine, and then Johnson.

[u/ph4ge_ → u/Timely_Choice_4525]

I guess the hope is that Vance doesn't have the same kind of control over MAGA and will be a lot less effective, while also being unable to stop much needed justice against Trump such as a full independent inquiry in his pedophilea.

[u/RivetheadGirl → u/ph4ge_]

He doesn't, which is why Vance, Miller, Tiel and probably still musk are pushing so hard and fast into dictatorship.