With the holiday shopping season fast approaching, America’s independent retailers are sounding alarm bells. Given soaring prices from tariffs enacted by the Trump administration, they are understandably alarmed. Entrepreneurs such as Jared Hendricks are feeling the heat. It’s estimated that Trump’s tariff costs will exceed almost $1 million dollars just this year. Small businesses are experiencing increasing anxiety, particularly those in the Main Street or retail sectors. To succeed, though, they all require significant and unavoidable reliance on that essential trading period.
Donald Trump’s trade war has caused prices to spike on a wide range of holiday staples. A survey of 1,048 small business owners revealed that 71% expect these tariffs to negatively impact consumer spending during the holiday season. Alarmingly, 44% of respondents predict a high negative impact on their sales because of rising costs.
Industry advocates point to tariffs’ driving a “massive” number of small businesses to closed doors. Boyd Stephenson, a representative from a toy and game studio, noted, “The number of toy and game studios that I have seen go under this year is massive.” This new trend is big trouble for the future of countless small businesses. In fact, 74% of those surveyed are concerned for their very existence in the coming 12 months because of these economic headwinds.
Tariffs have not only influenced listed prices for consumers, they’ve upset supply chains that are essential for delivering Christmas to under the tree. Business owners have a big hurdle to jump. Rebuilding this infrastructure to attract production back to the U.S. will cost hundreds of billions of dollars and take decades to replace. Hendricks emphasized the toll of these tariffs, stating, “At this point, we’ve kind of transitioned from working for profits to working for tariffs.”
To that, White House spokesperson Kush Desai claimed that American manufacturing has never made up the majority of Christmas products. He claimed that the administration was not responsible for the job losses due to tariffs. He stated, “The administration has consistently maintained that the cost of tariffs will ultimately be paid by the foreign exporters who rely on access to the American economy, the world’s biggest and best consumer market.”
Every day, small business owners are dealing with soaring and onerous costs. 44% of them have been forced to raise prices as a result of these tariffs. Boyd Stephenson described the predicament faced by manufacturers: “Most of my manufacturers and publishers don’t really have the space to absorb, or to pass on price increases to their customers, so they’re getting squeezed.”
As uncertainty hangs over the holiday shopping season, this is a painful reality that entrepreneurs such as Joann Cartiglia have to face. After investing significant retirement savings into her business, she expressed despair over her situation: “And now I have absolutely no hope of retirement.”