Drowning in tariffs, American businesses try to stay afloat

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🗓️ 10 April 2025

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

It's pretty rare for one person to do one thing that affects nearly every business in the United States. But that's the power of the presidency and the new tariffs that took effect this week.

Over the last few days, as the tariffs have gone up and down, NPR has been talking to Americans who run different kinds of businesses.

Even though their companies don't have much in common, all of them are doing the same thing right now: Trying to figure out what's going on and how to respond.

Trump's tariff plans affect nearly every company in America. We'll hear from a few business owners about what it means for them

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Transcript

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0:00.0	One way to tell the story of a trade war is through a curved piece of silicone called the frywall.
0:06.7	Frywall keeps the sizzle in the pan and the splatter off of you and your stove talk.
0:12.7	That is the inventor of the frywall, Yadir Reiner, on Shark Tank back in 2018.
0:18.6	Reiner priced out what it would cost for him to produce his invention in the U.S.
0:22.8	and figured to turn a profit, he'd have to sell a made-in-the-USA frywall for about 80 bucks.
0:28.9	You know, it's really hard to sell a splatter guard for that much money.
0:31.9	Even the best splatter guard in the world is not going to sell for $80.
0:35.3	Precisely. It is the best splatter guard in the world, but, you know, splatter just is not as important
0:39.4	as other things.
0:40.4	So he makes it in China, which allows him to sell it for about $25.
0:44.3	And he says that money gets spread around to many parts of the U.S. economy.
0:47.8	It goes to the U.S. Postal Service, which provides my quote-unquote free shipping. If I sell on Amazon, it goes to Amazon,
0:55.9	has to pay its warehouse workers. I also have to pay my patent attorney so that my patent is
1:01.5	protected and I can't get ripped off. It has to go to PR, it has to go to marketing. It has to go to
1:07.4	the software firms that I use to operate you know, operate and run by business.
1:11.6	But now, President Trump has put a 145% tariff on goods from China.
1:17.2	At least that's the number as we record this Thursday afternoon.
1:20.3	It's been a moving target.
1:21.5	I've worked hard to have a stable price on my product for almost 10 years.
1:26.3	And now I'm looking at a situation where I'm going to
1:29.1	have to raise it by 20, maybe 25%, maybe more. I'm not sure if I still have a market at that point.
1:36.0	And I don't know if I still have a business. And so if that's going to be the case for the
	...

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