One Year Tariff Anniversary: 37 Quotes from Small Businesses Across the Nation on their Experience, State & National Data

One year ago this week, President Trump announced sweeping tariffs on businesses across the country. On Thursday, March 26, We Pay the Tariffs held a press call with small business owners from Ohio, North Carolina, Texas, Montana, and Pennsylvania to discuss the cumulative damage, the status of refunds, and the impact of new tariffs that have replaced the ones the Supreme Court struck down.

Below you'll find quotes from call participants and other coalition members, along with links to the recording, transcript, and state-by-state data.

Video Recording: https://youtu.be/VtAtbOElTkM.

Transcript: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BaBOxdnhAI0S3WX8DGid3t0_TtQ7xOSs/view?usp=sharing.

Please note this transcript was auto-generated by Zoom. Quotes from participants below.

State-by-state tariff data: https://www.wepaythetariffs.com/impact-map

Note: This data will be updated on Thursday, April 2 when the Census Bureau releases new trade figures, coinciding with the one-year anniversary of Liberation Day.

Dan Anthony, Executive Director, We Pay the Tariffs

"One year after Liberation Day, the damage to America's small businesses goes far beyond what any tariff data can capture. These businesses have spent the last twelve months not growing, not hiring, not innovating, but surviving. They've drained savings, taken on debt, laid off employees, and cut product lines just to keep their doors open. The Supreme Court ruled these tariffs were illegal, and now the government needs to return the money. The system already knows who paid and how much. Requiring small businesses to hire lawyers, file paperwork, and navigate a complex bureaucratic process to get back money that should never have been taken is unacceptable. These businesses have been beyond inconvenienced. This has been an all-consuming crisis. We should not now create a new, all-consuming process to get that money back."

From the Press Call (March 26, 2026)

Matt Cagle, Rig'Em Right Outdoors (Morehead City, NC)

"Some of our tariffs are still 90%. We agreed with our retailers to meet in the middle, both eat a ton of margin, cut our profits, and just try to keep the doors open for a year. So everybody lost."

"This was the first year since I started my company in 2006 that we didn't grow. We were on a really sharp growth trajectory, and then all of a sudden, we're flat. When I tell colleagues at trade shows we ended up flat, they say, wow, you did great. You're the only one. Most people are down."

"If there's a tariff on every single country, all it is is a tax on U.S. business. It's not identifying a real problem. It's just raising our taxes. That's really all that's happened."

Kacie Wright, Houghton Horns (Keller, TX)

"Think about the impact on the music industry downstream. A 12-year-old kid who wants to take up the trumpet used to be able to buy a cheap one from China and get started. Now their band program doesn't have the budget. We are going to see this having an impact on the music industry for 10, 20 years, from all the kids that didn't take up music today."

"This has really been driving business away from small family-owned businesses towards the big megacorporations that can afford to eat more of those tariff costs. Even if the refund process gets worked out, we are still not going to be made whole. Just refunding us won't even get us back to baseline."

"I wake up every morning and check the news to see how many hours I need to spend changing prices on our website that day."

"Customs knows how much they've charged us. They should just be able to hit a refund button and send it back to us, instead of putting that burden on us to find customs paperwork from a year ago."

Ryan Guay, FLATED (Missoula, MT)

"We watched that press release, and we thought we were sitting pretty good because we were manufacturing in Vietnam. And then I see Vietnam's number one on the list at 56%. Our heart sank."

"We had to slow down on growth, slow down on hiring, slow down on new projects, slow down on events, slow down on increasing our office size. It took about a $400,000 chunk out of our profitability for the year."

"It's now the easiest time ever in history for overseas factories to sell direct to U.S. consumers through Amazon, or make a website in a day through AI, and undercut American companies. Nobody is talking about this."

"I don't even know what to say about the refunds. I have no faith that we'll ever see any of that, so we're not planning on it."

Andy Payne, Down Decor (Cincinnati, OH)

"Almost all of our components are imported, but then assembled in Cincinnati. Down-proof fabric is not woven in the USA. Nobody weaves it. Most feather and down comes from China because nobody eats geese and duck like the Chinese. We have the manufacturing capacity. We just don't have raw materials."

"We were doing costing per purchase order based on what the tariffs were that day. Complete inability to plan. We're up to almost $2 million in tariffs paid so far."

"In February of 2025, we had 154 people working in our factory. Today, we've got 78."

"If we got the refund back, it would go directly to our credit line that we had to expand in order to pay the tariffs initially."

"If there's going to be tariffs, please don't let them fluctuate every other month. It's impossible to plan."

From Coalition Members

Catherine Granger, Co-Founder Danch and Granger Selections (Los Altos Hills, CA)

"To avoid losing sales and customers, our small business absorbed half of the crushing 15% to 35% tariffs on our European wine imports, which wiped out our profit margins. The upfront cash required at the Customs forced us to cut back on incoming containers causing inventory shortages, lost revenue, and forced downsizing, just to stay afloat. Receiving our tariff refunds is critical so we can restore our cash flow and get back to importing the inventory we need to survive."

Chris Brewer, Founder, OMG Commerce (Springfield, MO)

“As a performance marketing agency for direct-to-consumer brands, I've seen firsthand how damaging tariffs have been, and the on-again, off-again nature of the last two years has worsened the situation. The administration touts billions in tariff gains, but that money isn't reaching the American small business owners who've had to lay off staff or shut down entirely as their margins disappeared. The downstream effect is real: fewer new ecommerce businesses, fewer Amazon sellers, and fewer businesses coming to us for help. I don't see this as America first when it's hurting Americans.”

Radhika Patil, CEO, Cradlewise (Fremont, CA)

"Even after the courts ruled these tariffs unconstitutional, we're still paying a 15% rate through July 2026, with higher rates potentially coming back after that. We didn't raise prices on exhausted new parents because we wanted to. The tariff bills kept coming, and the loans to cover them had to be paid back. A legal ruling doesn't mean the financial damage stops.

If we received a refund, the first thing we'd do is pay down the debt we took on just to cover these tariff bills. After that, we'd bring back the hires we had to freeze and reinvest in the product development we've had to defer. A refund isn't extra money for us. It's the money we need to run our business."

Sean Bergen, Owner, Sustainable Seafood Sales, LLC (Portland, ME)

"Our business is the importation of fresh cod, haddock and halibut from Iceland and Norway. These are species that are not sustainably harvested in U.S. waters due to historic overfishing.

In 2025 due to the tariffs our imports from Iceland were reduced by 45% from the previous year, and imports from Norway down by 100%. Exporters in Iceland are more comfortable shipping their fish to customers in the E.U. where they perceive less risk due to the tariffs and the unpredictable tax landscape in the U.S., and the major credit insurance firms in Norway ceased insuring fresh seafood shipments to U.S. importers entirely.

In an ironic twist, the Icelandic and Norwegian companies that own U.S. based marketing subsidiaries have been able to vastly understate the value of the goods being shipped to their U.S. companies on their shipping documents. This allows them to pay much lower import taxes, giving them a significant financial advantage over U.S. owned importers like Sustainable.

On the demand side our revenue is down 40% from 2024 due to the significantly higher sell price resulting from the tariff we are paying. Our customers simply switch to a different protein for center of the plate."

Chris Gunter, Precision Fluid Dynamics (Westminster, CA)

“My company is the only domestic producer of saltwater pumps. We use small electric motors to make our pumps. The only domestic supplier of these motors was acquired by a Swedish company six years ago and they promptly shut down the factory that made our motors. In desperation, we turned to China to purchase these motors. Our margins were already tight but following the tariffs, we are operating at a loss.

These motors are based on very old technology and represent a product category that does NOT need tariff protection.”

Beth Benike, Busy Baby (Oronoco, MN)

"Liberation Day didn't just devastate my family—it rippled through our entire small business community. I cashed out my retirement, didn't pay myself for months, had to let my brother and business partner go, and terminated contracts with other American small businesses who counted on us. All because of 145% tariffs on products America doesn't even manufacture, tariffs the Supreme Court later ruled unconstitutional. We paid zero tariffs for seven years because it made sense; one year of policy chaos destroyed lives and livelihoods."

Keval Kantaria, CEO of Endless Pens (Tampa, FL)

“Over the past year, tariffs have placed significant financial strain on Endless Pens, compressing our margins and forcing difficult operational decisions across the business. Since the April 2025 IEEPA tariffs, we’ve already had to lay off staff and halt all advertising just to stay afloat. Our sales have dropped by 20% while our import costs have risen by an average of 25%, further tightening cash flow and limiting our ability to operate normally. While the Section 122 tariffs have provided slight relief, the continued uncertainty—along with ongoing instability in the Middle East—has made it nearly impossible to forecast, plan, or invest in growth. Without timely refunds of these tariffs, we have already begun evaluating the possibility of declaring bankruptcy as early as July.”

Stuart Coulter, Owner, III D Sporting Goods, LLC (Hanover, NH)

"The “Liberation Day” tariffs have had a devastating effect on my business. Since April, 2025, when the first of the tariffs went into effect, my business volume has decreased 70% and the drop in profitability is even worse. Not knowing from day to day what the actual tariff would be, made it very difficult to set pricing on future orders, and even worse was the anti-China sentiment causing customers to walk away from purchasing anything made in China. After successfully building my business for almost 20 years, in less than a year it has all but been dismantled by the actions of the administration, making it nearly impossible for me to continue. Having the tariffs I paid returned to me is little consolation for the permanent damage done to my ability to recover this year’s, and future revenue."

Laurie Sebestyen, Owner, Curry Love, Inc. d/b/a Mike's Organic Foods

"Since Trump announced his tariff policy, we have been forced to discontinue all but four of our products which is a devastating blow to our bottom line and our fan base, but it was the only way to keep our doors open. The stress of going into debt year over year, starting with the upheaval of the pandemic & exorbitant price gouging in the shipping industry, GSP lapse & then 'Liberation Day' tariffs, has put an unimaginable burden on small businesses, just to survive. As the only US owned and operated USDA Organic producer of authentic Thai curries, we feel punished by these ridiculous & arbitrary taxes on food products that cannot be produced here in the US. We operate a nimble, lean, small business but no amount of planning or pivoting can offset the expense & uncertainty we face under this administration's misguided policies. Shame on Scott Bessent, and anyone else who supports these taxes on US businesses."

Julie Robbins, CEO, EarthQuaker Devices (Akron, OH)

"The tariffs imposed under Section 122 are just another abrupt tax imposed on US manufacturers, extending the pain that began on April 2, 2025. Now with the added 301 investigations, uncertainty and instability continue to drag our time and resources. We are currently experiencing a 30% increase in our cost of raw materials with no end in sight. There is still no domestic sourced supply chain for the nearly 1000 components we use to manufacture our line of 50 guitar pedals. We have not seen any trade deals which benefit us or our reputation overseas, but the global instability created by the US continues to have a negative impact on our exports."

Sarah Wells, Founder & CEO, Sarah Wells Bags (Fairfax, VA)

"In the year since Liberation Day, I have laid off American workers, closed my physical office space in Virginia, and drained my reserves just to keep my business alive. The IEEPA tariffs were ruled unlawful, but I'm still waiting on refunds while paying new tariffs under Section 122 and facing yet another round of Section 301 investigations. Every new tariff action pushes small businesses like mine closer to the edge, not because we failed to adapt, but because the rules won't stop changing overnight."

Iris Hernandez, Co-Founder, Inspire Hardware (Seattle, WA)

"Ongoing tariff volatility has made our business harder to predict and plan. We've pulled back on inventory to avoid overexposure, but that's come at the cost of product availability and lost revenue. At the same time, tariffs have reduced our profitability by more than 60%, cutting margins from tens of thousands of dollars in prior years to just a few thousand, directly limiting our ability to operate and invest in expansion."

Jamie Krapec Licht, Executive VP, Harbortown Industries (Lake Forest, IL)

"Over the past year, we reduced profit margins, reduced orders from customers (Big Box Retailers like Target/Walmart/etc.), and increased expenses in sourcing and compliance. We re-shifted focus to surviving instead of being innovative and creating great products to bring to market. We were finally seeing the clouds part, and then with Section 122 the storm clouds re-appeared. If this goes into effect, then our pricing structure will be changed for the good and consumers will be the ones with higher prices to pay. Higher costs means demand will go down and we see business shrinking again, when we had hoped for a rebound from the previous year."

Steve Raftopoulos, Founder, Klio Tea (Fairfax, VA)

"We import from the EU. Last year, we absorbed the tariff cost because we didn't want to raise prices since there was so much uncertainty regarding the permanence of the tariffs. In light of Trump's plan to continue the EU tariffs we will definitely raise prices this year. A refund would allow us to pay off working capital debt we took on to cover the tariff costs."

Joel Bittner, President & CEO, Plastic Film Corporation (Shorewood, IL)

"There has been severe and lasting damage that the IEEPA tariffs, enacted last April, has inflicted upon our business. When the tariffs took effect, we were not given time to restructure our supply chain, renegotiate contracts, or build adequate reserves. We were simply handed a dramatically higher cost of doing business overnight. To stay afloat, we were forced to do something we had worked hard to avoid: we borrowed money. Taking on debt was not a strategic choice, it was an act of survival. And with that debt came interest expenses that compound our burden month after month. We are now paying not only the tariffs themselves, but the ongoing cost of having had to finance them. Every dollar spent on interest is a dollar not spent on our people, our products, or our future. Growth, which was once our focus and our motivation, now feels reckless. We are not asking for special treatment. We are asking to be seen."

Gene Niksich, Unique Sports Products Inc (Alpharetta, GA)

"We are a small sporting goods business since 1972 in Alpharetta, Georgia. We import tennis nets from India. These nets are made from polyester rope. The rope has to be tied in thousands of knots. In India the knotting is all done by hand by many workers at way below our wage minimums. How in the world can we do that here in the USA? So what purpose does the 30%-50% import duty on tennis nets serve here? None. It inflates. It is simply a tax on American citizens. Conducting our business now is like flying a plane in the fog."

Andrea Englisis, President, Athenee Importers & Distributors (Hempstead, NY)

"Tariffs have resulted in a 20% on average price increase on all products we import from Greece & Cyprus. In order to preserve cash flows to pay hefty tariff bills, we are shipping smaller quantities more frequently to spread out the costs. We have also had to pause hiring as the funds that would have gone to salaries have gone to pay tariffs. If we received a refund, we would be able to hire needed personnel plus work with our distribution network to lower prices on goods in the market that were affected by tariffs. However, with the tariffs still in place, we cannot plan for the long term as there is still uncertainty surrounding them and the levels they will be at."

Greg Shugar, Owner, Beau Ties (Middlebury, VT)

"We're a cut and sew factory in Vermont manufacturing most of our products from jacquard silk, which must be imported from China and Italy because it is not manufactured here in the U.S. As a result, tariffs drove our costs up in 2025, which forced price increases as much as 20%. If tariff refunds ever occur we have committed to sharing them with our staff as a bonus."

Shawn Taylor, M&S Logistics (San Diego, CA)

"I would use the tariff refunds to hire more people and expand in my respective industry, not only doing my part to enhance our economy, but also providing opportunities for other fellow Americans."

Cassie Abel, Founder & CEO, Wild Rye (Ketchum, ID)

"Over the past year, tariffs and related costs forced us to make countless decisions we hadn't planned to have to make. We ultimately raised over $1 million in equity capital ahead of schedule, not because the business lacked momentum, but because we needed to offset nearly half a million dollars in unexpected tariff, freight and other unexpected expenses. That meant selling more of Wild Rye than I intended at this stage, simply to absorb a shock created by our own government. Getting those funds refunded is critical to putting that capital back to work, investing in growth, hiring, and product innovation rather than recovering from avoidable costs."

Jeremy Rose, Aris Get, LLC (Jasper, GA)

"I have never been so stressed in my life and haven't had a good night's sleep since 'Liberation Day.' The president bragging about it is salt in the wound. WE PAY YOUR TARIFFS. My steel is not made here and the fact we are paying an insanely high percentage without any care from a man who promised to look out for small business is an absolute abomination just like his tariffs. My life has been turned upside down."

Melkon Khosrovian, Co-founder, Greenbar Distillery (Los Angeles, CA)

"We see a perfect storm forming around us, tariff chaos with no relief in sight compounded by war-driven price increases and consumer anxiety. Instead of helping to dissipate this storm and letting business and our economy get back to what it's best at, our government seems focused on strengthening it. I'm not sure how long we can keep our head above water."

About the Data

All data comes from Trade Partnership Worldwide's State Tariff Tracker ("Tracker") database. The Tracker combines national import and tariff data from the U.S. Census Bureau (Census), including details on special provisions that either lower tariffs (e.g., preference claims such as USMCA) or increase them (e.g., Chapter 99 rates for Section 301 or IEEPA tariffs), tariff schedules from the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), and state import value data from Census. Trade Partnership Worldwide data is frequently cited in national and international media including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, ABC, NBC, CBS, Axios, Politico, CNBC, CNN, BBC, and more.

About We Pay the Tariffs

We Pay the Tariffs is a grassroots coalition of over 1,100 small businesses that advocates against tariffs. Members include restaurants, manufacturers, retailers, and other enterprises from every U.S. region. For more information: www.wepaythetariffs.com

MEDIA CONTACT: press@wepaythetariffs.com