The unexpected cost of tariffs for some small business owners
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It's Consider This, where every day we go deep on one big news story. For years, NPR business correspondent Alina Selyuk has reported on the world of retail, shoppers and sellers from Walmart to the neighborhood cafe.
Amazon has agreed to pay $1 billion in civil penalties. What I heard from Costco and Walmart, they both said their lower gas prices have people lining up actually.
But last year, her reporting took a turn. She was starting to hear that small businesses were being hit hard by the Trump administration tariffs, especially before the Supreme Court struck many of those tariffs down.
when American small business owners scrambled to pay unexpected tariffs to the U.S. government. Their goods landed at ports from around the world, as usual, but claiming them suddenly cost tens of thousands of unbudgeted dollars.
Many couldn't cover the costs and face the prospect of not being able to get their products out of customs. Some had to tap into a murky world of financing to stay afloat. Here's what one small business owner, Joshua Esnard, told her.
They can offer you as much money as you'll take, but they will charge you whatever they want.
Asnard ended up accruing hundreds of thousands of dollars in lending costs and fees to cover those tariff payments. Consider this. When President Trump invokes tariffs, he promises they'll benefit Americans. But the experience of some small business owners tells a different story.
From NPR, I'm Debbie Elliott.
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With President Trump announcing new tariffs, we wanted to speak to Alina about what she's learned covering the unexpected costs small businesses are shouldering. For this week's Reporter's Notebook, I began by asking her how she started covering the story.
For me personally, actually, the day that President Trump announced his big tariffs, which was called the Liberation Day, I was physically at a fly-in of small business owners organized by the National Retail Federation. Serendipitous. It was quite serendipitous. And, of course, tariffs became the conversation topic. of the afternoon, and I met a large group of retailers at that event who immediately were able to give very specific examples of how tariffs will affect their specific businesses. And I stayed in touch with those folks, and then they put me in touch with other folks, the small business community, especially people who are kind of out there talking about their business quite openly. It's a pretty interconnected group.
I kind of grew a long list of business owners who I text with on the regular just to check in. And that is kind of how I stayed on top of how tariffs were playing out for real humans running businesses in the U.S.
So one of the people that you met during this is this colorful entrepreneur who made millions selling haircut kits, of all things. Tell us about him and where his story took you.
Yeah, you're talking about Joshua Esnard. Actually, a bit of an interesting backstory of how this happened. As I mentioned, I was in touch with a large group of retailers, small business owners. And at yet another fly-in, we at NPR interviewed invited a whole bunch of them to come to the office for a roundtable, which was one of the most illuminating experiences of tariffs. So we had, I don't know, like a dozen small business owners around the table just talking about what tariffs have been like.
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