Yves here. This article provides some vignettes about the way Trump tariffs, both the (probable) fact of their imposition and the whipsawing over them is wreaking havoc with successful small businesses. These modest-scale enterprises are the engine of job growth. Some of the ones profiled here are also manufacturers, even if not the metal-bending or techish sort. So America is going to have to dig itself out of not just the offshoring/outsourcing hole, but also Trump-inflicted tariff wounds? How is that supposed to work, exactly?
I am perhaps more sentimental about these case studies than I ought to be, because it reminds me of the gritty and vibrant city I moved to when young. There were a lot more small retailers, many of whom sold their own wares, from specialty food stores to niche clothes designers and even hat makers to importers of European casual china to lighting specialists. And I think of the friends and contacts who started or helped run a products business, from a jewelry designer to a dietary supplements maker to a board games designer and manufacturer to a maker of specialty food products (exotic jams and pastes to use in cooking). All of these small businesses are fragile; only one of the four mentioned above survived for more than five years.
By Greg David. Published by THE CITY on March 11, 2025
Annie’s Ginger Elixir founders Allard Van Hoorn and Annie Bassin work out of their Brooklyn Navy Yard production center, March 20, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
The glass bottles that Annie Bassin uses to bottle her wellness beverage come from China and became 25% more expensive when President Donald Trump imposed a tariff during his first term. Now that he has added another 20% tariffs to goods coming from that country, Bassin sees little choice but to raise the price on her most popular item — a one-liter bottle that currently sells for $45.
Almost a third of the food Manny Colon purchases for his Upper West Side bistro comes from either Canada or Mexico. If Trump imposes his promised 25% tariff on those countries, he will face a choice of raising his prices or seeing his profits disappear. Maybe worse, he says business is down 20% in recent weeks which he thinks is because his heavily older clientele, living on Social Security and investment income, is cutting back amid the economic storms of the last three months.
Ali Williams, director of production at the Brooklyn-based apparel company Kirrin Finch, spends half her time gaming out scenarios as Trump announces and then withdraws tariffs. The company currently sources its goods from Italy and India, but must place orders at least six months in advance, which means enormous uncertainty about what its goods might actually cost to import.
“The biggest thing day to day is dealing with the whiplash of which country and which product types would be subject to tariffs,” Kelly Moffat, her boss and co-founder of the company.
Marilyn Verdesoto produces Annie’s Ginger Elixer bottles inside their Brooklyn Navy Yard headquarters, March 10, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Like their counterparts around the country, small businesses in New York City are being buffeted by Trump’s actions to impose wide-ranging tariffs and promises for more. They are considering raising their prices or finding new places to source their goods, but they are also paralyzed by the uncertainty created by Trump’s on-and-off approach.
At the moment, most tariffs on Canada and Mexico are on hold, a 20% levy is in effect for China and the administration is considering imposing fees on European products.
A tit-for-tat this week over power Canada exports to the U.S., much of which goes to New York, ended with pledges to begin negotiations.
The stakes for New York are huge. Canada is the number-one export market for New York State companies, buying more than $10 billion worth of services and $9.5 billion worth of goods annually.
The tariffs Trump has threatened on China, Canada and Mexico would cost the average New York State household $1,742 a year, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute, a labor-based group that supports targeted tariffs but not the Trump approach. It is the 11th highest projected burden in the country.
For small businesses, the immediate question is whether they will need to raise prices.
Trump administration officials have claimed that foreign producers will absorb the cost of tariffs, but these New York businesses say the costs are being passed along to them.
Colon, who in 2020 opened Manny’s Bistro on the site of a shuttered restaurant he had managed for 15 years on Columbus Avenue, said he is unlikely to raise prices because he worries his customers won’t be willing or able to pay them. His is already one of a minority of restaurants that doesn’t add a surcharge for credit card payments.
“I have a supportive clientele and they are concerned about costs,” he added. “I might have to cut back on staffing. It is going to be messy.”
Bassin too is worried about how customers of Annie’s Ginger Elixir will react but believes she has no choice but to raise her prices in May. Her company has grown in eight years from making her beverage, designed to improve respiratory health, in her home kitchen to an enterprise with more than $1 million in sales, employing eight people at the Brooklyn Navy Yard as well as more than 15 brand ambassadors.
She has looked into buying her bottles domestically, but the cost would be at least triple and would involve much larger minimum order sizes.
“I’d have to double my prices and that would put me out of business,” she said.
When Kirrin Finch was just starting out 10 years ago, it made its product in Midtown, but as it grew it needed lower costs and specialized workers, which it found in India and Italy. Despite having several million dollars in sales, Moffat thinks she will encounter stiff consumer resistance if she raises the price of her top-of-the-line $600 Italian menswear suit, which is sold primarily to women, trans and non-binary people.
“We are really just trying to cover all our bases and look at every country we can and be prepared for what may or may not happen,” said Williams.
However, the company needs to place its orders six months in advance and has hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of goods in production now, which could suddenly become much more expensive if tariffs are imposed before they reach the United States.
She has no choice but to live with that uncertainty.
With so much in flux, every move the businesses are considering becomes more risky. Bassin, for example, has been planning to start exporting to the United Kingdom and Japan. But she has taken note of how Canadian retailers have taken American liquor brands off their shelves.
“Are people in the U.K. going to want American products any more?” she asked.
