00:00A stream of sweetness in increasingly bitter business conditions.
00:05Erin Calvabacci has run the specialty chocolate manufacturing business for 18 years.
00:10But the prospect of tariffs forcing her to pay more to make her products has her worried for the future.
00:16For chocolate, from the Ivory Coast.
00:19For molding cups, from Italy.
00:21For packaging, from China.
00:23Tariffs hurt because it is a punishment.
00:26We can't change where the chocolate's coming from.
00:29I can't change where the sugar is grown.
00:32And I can't change where the cup that is made for my peanut butter cups is also produced.
00:38Those are companies that just don't exist here.
00:41And if you take that away, if you add to that, it just means my product may not be able to be around anymore.
00:51For now, she's trying to control her costs, buying smaller amounts of inputs,
00:55keeping the gap between what she spends and what she earns as narrow as possible.
01:00But it also means she's unable to benefit from paying less for bulk purchases.
01:04It's one of the many trade-offs she's making as a small business owner.
01:08But she doesn't know how long she can keep making them.
01:11If the tariffs really drastically strangle my business and my affordability of running this business,
01:18then I will have to look at ending this and then moving on to whatever the next chapter of my life is going to be.
01:26And that's not ideally what I want to be doing, especially because it's not just me going away.
01:32It's these jobs going away.
01:35It's the people that we then sell into.
01:37Those are businesses that, because of our product, they have salespeople selling the product.
01:43It's just the trickle-down effect that really is alarming because it really just feels like it's looming.
01:50Just like Erin Calvabachi's operation, 99.9% of businesses in America are small businesses.
01:57Collectively, they employ nearly 46% of American workers and make up nearly 44% of economic output.
02:04But some proprietors say tariffs would just be the latest in a series of stumbling blocks they've already had to overcome.
02:10We dealt with a pandemic. We dealt with an increase in the price of raw materials.
02:16We've dealt with an increase in the minimum wage rate.
02:21So this is just going to be another challenge that we're going to have to deal with and, in this case, possibly pass the cost on to our customers.
02:30Marian Horniak owns a kitchenware shop, sourcing her products from around the world too.
02:36She worries that even just talk of tariffs could be enough to keep customers away.
02:41I just think the threat of imposing the tariffs is just so knee-jerk.
02:46It's kind of fear-mongering because, whether it happens or not, it's already been presented as a possibility.
02:51And some people take that as, you know, it's definitely going to happen.
02:56Whether it is or not, people are already, you know, fearing it.
03:00And that can have an effect on our bottom line.
03:04You know, like, oh, you know, I'm not going to go buy anything because of these tariffs when it, in reality, hasn't even been imposed yet.
03:12So I think it's already a thing, even though it's not a thing.
03:17If or when tariffs materialize, what will they be applied to and by how much?
03:22The so-far unanswered question is making it difficult for small businesses to prepare themselves.
03:27But once they do know, and tariffs do start to bite, the question shifts to an existential one for many.
03:33It's whether they would be able to survive, and at what cost.
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