Small business owners who sell on Amazon and Etsy are having to decide what to do about President Donald Trump’s tariffs which have rocked the global stock markets with the threat of increased import costs for Americans.
Business Insider spoke to three of them about how they’re navigating the changing climate.
Lisa Lane
Lisa Lane sells her Rinseroo products, a line of slip-on shower hoses, out of the US but are made in China.
Lane, who started the business in 2019, told BI she is “frustrated by the misconception that these tariffs will lead to more domestic manufacturing.”
For her small business, shifting production from Shanghai, China, to the US isn’t feasible.
“We lack the infrastructure to do so, and outsourcing domestically would be prohibitively expensive,” the 59-year-old based in New York said. “Our ability to manufacture overseas allows us to offer a high-quality product at an affordable price.”
Lane told BI her business was already facing delays at US ports due to increased inspections.
“Recently, our last two containers were held for six weeks for a full inventory inspection, creating major supply chain disruptions,” she said. “The delays at the port are affecting our ability to maintain adequate inventory to meet demand.”
Lane said she believed this increase to be tariff-related. “They are checking to see that goods match what we claim is entering,” she added.
Lane had projected the the tariffs Trump announced last week on Chinese goods would push annual cost of production up by $200,000. She said this would come out of her bottom line unless she increased costs to account for it.
“It’s an enormous hit for a company with around $5 million in annual revenue,” she said.
On Monday, Trump said he would add an additional 50% tariff on Chinese imports, after China retailed to Trump’s tariffs saying they would impose a 34% tariff on US goods.
Lane said on Friday they weren’t planning on absorbing the additional tariff. “We need to offset the cost to do business as usual,” she added.
Joanna Read
Joanna Read makes historical costumes for private clients, theatrical and TV productions, and museums. The 39-year-old, based in Lincolnshire, England, said a quarter of her annual turnover is sales to the US through Etsy.
With the de minimis import threshold currently at $800 for products shipped out of the UK, she doesn’t think there will be a direct impact on her sales.
The de minimis loophole means any packages entering the US valued at less than $800 are exempt from tariffs. However, President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday that will end the loophole for packages coming from China and Hong Kong as of May 2.
Trump hasn’t mentioned any further changes to the loophole, but the executive order has received bipartisan support — a rarity amid the negative tariff feedback.
Read said if anything did change, “I would expect to see a significant downturn in sales.”
Read said she is concerned that the confusion about UK imports into the States will deter American customers from buying from sellers like herself.
“It also goes without saying that if my American customers are facing increased costs elsewhere in their lives, then they’re less likely to be spending with me,” she said.
Looking long-term, Read said she focusing on growing her UK client base to make up for potential income deficits.
“It’s always a background worry when you are a small, even micro, business if your potential audience shrinks,” she said. “It seems such a shame in our shared global community that things seem to be becoming more and more insular.”
Bernie Thompson
Bernie Thompson runs Plugable, a Washington-based company that designs and sells computer accessories on Amazon and their online storefront.
Thompson told BI they are preparing for tariffs to have a huge impact on their business if they remain in place. “There is nowhere for this pressure to go other than pushing up prices,” he said.
Plugable started moving their production out of China to other countries in Asia nearly ten years ago, in part because of 2018 tariffs on Chinese goods.
Thompson had thought majority of his production pipeline would be unaffected as it comes from Vietnam, Taiwan, and Thailand, but on April 2, that changed. Now with the new tariffs, he told BI he’s looking at taxes of over a third of the value of his imports.
“These tariffs are several times as large as our net profits on these goods. These orders are commitments to our partners,” Thompson said.
Thompson said the most immediate impact was air freight congestion as sellers are rushing to get stock into the US before tariffs come into effect on Wednesday.
The electronics business owner said he’s trying to protect his customers and staff from the knock-on impacts of tariffs: “We have over 50 full-time employees in the US and Canada. We’re an American-owned company. That said, the numbers at play are larger than the margins of our business, so in time, we’re forced to pass through all of the effects.”
Thompson said he’d love to be an innovator for efficient, automated production in the US, but those plans would be “years in the making.”
