From her home in Phoenix, Erica Campbell is waiting for a ship shipment from China to give a shipment of thousands of Jesus dolls, Tin’s Easter eggs, a swaddle blanket for religious children, and 15,000 packages of Jesus heals bandage.
Ms. Campbell, 36, owner of EU Heart, a Catholic goods business, paid Chinese factories that produce items months ago. The boxes were loaded in a container before President Trump set a new 10 percent fee for all Chinese imports on February 1st. She said she probably avoided paying an additional task as a result, but she was worried she would have more US fees to come.
“I can’t figure out what will happen,” Ms. Campbell said. “I’m on high standby.”
Mr. Trump’s intention of China has thrown millions of small businesses in the riots. For decades, US firms have designed products in the United States and returned to Chinese factories to produce goods efficiently and freely. How Apple produces the iPhone, and how an entrepreneur like Ms. Campbell, a mother of three, operates a business she said generates $ 2 million a year on sale from her kitchen.
The New York Times has heard from nearly 100 companies importing from China on how the president’s fees were touching. They are a cross section of enterprises that try to sew in the global economy: companies that make greeting postcards, on board games, outdoor shoes, hangers, digital photo frames, coffee accessories, toys, stained windows and custom electronics.
Some topics appeared. American businesses, not Chinese suppliers, were the cost of tariffs. Many companies said they would have to raise prices to compensate for expenses if they didn’t already have. Some spoke of a sense of business paralysis: they were afraid to make plans between the unpredictable course of new tariffs, for fear of the risk of moving production by China as no country seemed immune.
Returning to household alternatives was usually not applicable because they were more expensive, the quality was inferior and less likely. Finally, fully recreating their supply chain would be a large enterprise for companies, demanding time and expenses that they cannot save easily.
At a minimum, business owners are facing a 10 percent cost increase of goods they bring from China – whether ingredients for items collected in the United States or finished products made in Chinese facilities. They can get a bill when the goods reach the port, or additional expenses may be joined in shipment costs. Either way, entrepreneurs said, in many cases they would be money from their pockets.
And this can only be the beginning.
Mr. Trump promised last week to impose another 10 percent tax on all Chinese imports starting Tuesday, the same day that tariffs in Mexico and Canada will begin. The status of both countries as important stations for Chinese goods and the perspective of revenge gives small business owners another thing to worry about. Starting from March 12, it will have a task of 25 percent for imported steel and aluminum – two metals, the production of which prevails. US trade officials are proposing to impose tariffs on Chinese ships entering the US ports, potentially increasing transport costs from China.
Mr. Trump said the 10 percent fee was “a opening Salvo”. Last year in the campaign trail, he pledged a fee of up to 60 percent.
Even in 10 percent, the tariff is a heavy blow to Julianna Rae, a company that sells high -level silk dresses because all its products are made in China. Headquartered in Burlington, Mass., Company designs silk, pajamas and nights produced in China. It imports goods to the United States and sells them on its website and Amazon.
Company owners, Bill Keefe and Juli Lee, said they were trying to deal with increasing the cost that Mr. Trump’s import taxes were imposing on them. They had imported many inventory before the tariffs came into force, pending the seasonal Christmas demand and Valentine’s Day. Ms. Lee is also exploring if she will delay some shipments in the hope that Mr. Trump can return the course with his fees.
Order rest is a danger. Ms. Lee, 56, worries about not having products available to clients. Its Chinese suppliers, already feeling the top from a slow domestic economy, will try to keep inventory for longer periods.
“How many bet can you push over them?” Ms. Lee said, referring to her suppliers, who had grown up close after working together for more than a decade. “Uncertainty is really difficult by both sides.”
After all, the extra expense may have to be passed to the consumer. Mr. Keefe, 71, said the price of a well -known silk group, which is packaged by $ 300, could rise $ 15.
However, the 20-year-old company has little choice, but stay in China. Silk production facilities exist elsewhere, such as Sri Lanka, India, South Korea and Thailand, but “the best machine, the best expertise, the ability to produce quality goods at a good price is in China,” said Mr. Keefe.
For open companies to move production in the United States, the challenge is to find a factory.
For 18 years, the company based in San Francisco of Chris Miksovsky, Humengear, has designed its external and travel products to the United States and produced them in Chinese factories.
But remembering the fee crackdown during Trump’s first presidency, Mr. Miksovsky, 56, wanted to see if domestic production had more meaning now. He wanted to start simply with the best -selling, but easier product to make Humengear: a plastic tool with a fork on one side and a spoon on the other used for camps.
He email with six companies, four of which were never answered. The two who expressed an interest asks many questions about product specifications. After Mr. Miksovsky responded to any investigation, one company stopped responding to his electronic posts, and the other responded a few weeks later apologizing but did not give a quota.
“Well very good to say that we will set these fees to return work in America,” he said. “This assumes that America has the ability to make your product, and, most importantly, it assumes that it has an interest in making that product.”
Mr. Miksovsky said he was looking at new production places, perhaps in Thailand or Vietnam, but that it was difficult to predict the countries Mr. Trump would aim for another.
“Let’s say you spend all this time, effort and money to transfer your production to another country – who means Trump wakes up and that morning he says,” We will put 60 percent fees in Vietnam, Cambodia, South Africa or choose your country “?” He said.
Shawn Ernst, 39, diversified suppliers for the business of repair parts of his family equipment, premature supply, during Trump’s first presidency in a country he thought would be safe from increasing the costs of a trade war with Beijing: Mexico.
But now the 45-year-old family business, based in St. Charles, Ill, is withdrawing from the perspective of a double fee. Company repair parts are made of foreign steel and aluminum, so it faces higher costs from a new 25 percent fee for materials. Moreover, he may have to start paying an additional fee when importing his products from Mexico. He said it was not clear if he would be taxed twice, but his opportunity “keeps me at night.”
Mr. Ernst, who runs the business with his brother, said his Mexican suppliers were willing to absorb a 5 percent cost increase. However, premature supply will have to exceed the rest of the cost cost to customers. He said part of the 23 dollar oven replacement could soon cost $ 31. If Snap Supply raises prices too much, he fears that his business will become non -competitive with Chinese companies selling similar parts in Amazon.
He is also concerned that tariffs can force his company to rest some of his 45 employees, he said.
“We’ve never felt so touched by something a president has done,” he said. “It is so disappointing to see what’s really going on.”
Ms Campbell, the seller of religious goods, said she was thinking of spending some of the additional costs of fees for her clients. However, she has no desire because her products are not essential and her customers are families like what is already at higher costs for groceries and gas.
The spectrum of even higher Chinese import tariffs has its feeling in panic.
“I don’t think people understand what it looks like,” she said. “Not just for my business, but in life – how will we allow this after everything comes from China?”