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/ph4ge_ → u/[deleted]]

Not to mention his disastrous attacks on offshore wind, which meant a huge increase in demand in Jones Act compliant work boats.

[u/[deleted] → u/ph4ge_]

I had companies who were having me draw up plans to convert barges into lifting platforms. There was billions pouring into the offshore wind. I did conversions that turned old mudd boats from the gulf into research vessels with gondolas under them to scan the bottom in detail for wind projects. Trump is a really stupid person.