Tariffs on Vietnam Threaten U.S. Small Businesses

For the first time ever in March, monthly United States imports from Vietnam exceeded those from China. This is part of a stunning supply chain shift, as American companies heeded the call from multiple Presidents and bipartisan leaders to reduce reliance on China: the U.S. imported 3x more from China than Vietnam in 2024, 5x more from China in 2021, and 11x (!) more as recently as 2018.  

So of course USTR announced a new, Vietnam-specific Section 301 investigation that could punish all those American small businesses that did exactly what their government asked. Vietnam-specific tariffs could stack on top of proposed 12.5% Section 301 “forced labor” tariffs and likely Section 301 “excess capacity” tariffs expected to be announced any day now. 

What does this mean for small businesses that import from Vietnam? Here are several examples from the ongoing We Pay the Tariffs survey:

• “Tariffs have been strangling our cash flow and caused us to carry debt and pay interest. Routine parts of doing business like pricing a new product have become very difficult to navigate with all the changes.”

• “We lost more than $200,000 in 2025, after we had previously been operating profitably. It was purely the effect of significantly raising retail prices in the wake of new tariffs.”

Another respondent explained the challenges created by uncertainty over future tariff rates:

• “The continued uncertainty of what the tariff structure will be has caused inability to plan and invest in U.S. operations due to uncertainty about where future costs will land. The inability to plan is the biggest hindrance to our business and our customer's businesses across America (80% of which are U.S. manufacturers).”

As USTR considers potential action under Section 301, small businesses are again being asked to plan around policies whose final costs and scope remain unknown.

These are the types of experiences we seek to capture in our new survey – with the end goal of publishing a major tariff report. The more responses received, the more robust our results will be. 

Please add your experience by answering now and/or sharing this link with others that might be willing to respond.

Take the Survey