The recent tariffs imposed by President Trump are spelling doom for our nation’s economy. This decision will not only make economic inflation way worse, but also could also have devastating impacts on small businesses.
The CEO of onesuch businesses, Wildfang, recently went on CBS News to discuss the impacts these tariffs have on acquiring and selling products and goods for small business owners.
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Wildfang is a queer, women-owned clothing brand that creates and designs clothing for people who are gender-nonconforming. After being established in 2012, the company recently became profitable, but now their CEO and Co-founder, Emma McIlroy, says that the prospect of remaining profitable disappeared overnight due to the tariffs.
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“Our summer order arrived on Monday this week. If that order had arrived today, it would have cost us $178,000 more to receive it. I don’t have that money.” McIlroy states.
It’s heartbreaking to see a business like Wildfang, whose mission is to make fashion more gender inclusive, go through this on top of all the other attempts from the same administration to restrict gender-expansive people from fitting in and belonging within our society.
It can not be overstated how devastating the consumer inflation would be for small businesses to keep up with demand.
“Businesses would have to pass this on to consumers. If you were trying to maintain the same structure that you have right now would mean an 83% increase in consumer prices. I don’t think you are going to see that full price increase, but that’s how aggressive this would be for consumers.” McIlroy states, when asked how this would affect consumer prices. “I don’t think consumers are going to pay that level of a price increase.”
President Trump is hoping these tariffs will increase manufacturing within the U.S. by making America less reliant on foreign imports The only problem with that is there has been no major investment in industrial infrastructure in the last 60 years by our government or private industries, which is why we have depressed areas like the Rust Belt. On top of that, some goods can’t be produced in the U.S., including certain textiles.
“I fully support that vision; I’m a huge proponent of U.S. manufacturing,” McIlroy states when asked about Wildfang switching to American-made garments. “It’s not an option for most apparel businesses, certainly most small apparel businesses — the minimum order quantities that they ask for, it’s not an option beyond that you can’t get the material in America to make most clothing things like rayons, polyesters, woven materials whether synthetic or not.”
Let’s hope Wildfang will be able to pull through another reckless and irresponsible decision from the President, who has as much impulse control as a heated vape pen.
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