Thread by @NumbersMuncher

Since my business is now caught up in the trade war, I want to go over how crippling it is not just from the tariffs alone, but the uncertainty that Trump's constant back and forth are causing for a lot of small businesses like myself.

Over the last few years we've had products made in the US and in China. The products we make in China would cost anywhere from 2-4x what the cost to make in China.

What that means is if we made them in the US, we would have almost no sales. You can only increase prices so much.

In making these products in China, we have to put or orders in about 45 days before they ship. This is normally not a problem, but when Trump unilaterally slaps tariffs on items with little notice it becomes one.

This has happened with two of our orders this month alone.

We placed two orders that will be "on the water" before Sept 1, but Trump is giving no exemption for those containers.

In other words, we placed the order well before Trump's new tariff announcement, they will leave China before 9/1, but we're still going to pay 10% tariffs.

These are low margin products that sell well during the holidays which now have a 10% tariff tax attached to them.

That forces us to either increase the costs to consumers or to eat the tariffs. We're looking at that now, but will likely increase slightly and eat some of them.

The uncertainty makes this so difficult, and there are so many small businesses like mine doing the same thing (I know because I talk to them), and so many are trying now to get orders in for the holidays.

While Trump delayed *some* of these new tariffs, he left most in place.

By Trump delaying some of the new tariffs until 12/15, he arbitrarily chose winners and losers.

In other words - Trump went through a list of products and decided which categories (companies) he did not want to harm for holiday sales, and which he didn't care about either way.

So now we have two containers that are coming in that will have a 10% tariff bill attached to them that we will have to pay 100% of -- China will not pay one cent of the tariffs as I've screamed about for months.

And now we're looking at the next orders and wondering what to do.

Every order placed now will have a 10% tariff attached to it, with Trump threatening to raise it to 25% if China doesn't back off.

And while the 10% tariff will be very painful to our small business, a 25% tariff would be crippling.

So many businesses are going through this.

I hope this illustrates how chaotic Trump's trade policies are for US businesses, and why Trump's impulsive tariff decisions are devastating.

We all fear that Trump will add/increase the tariffs while orders are en route to us, and it's really awful to plan a business that way.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading.

If you did not read the thread, here's a TLDR: Trump's trade war is making life tough for small businesses, China isn't paying one cent of the tariffs, and I will be hit with tariffs next month.

"Trade wars are good and easy to win."