The American Casualties of Trump’s Tariffs – John McCormack

Benike could not afford the $230,000 tariff, so her product languished in China until Trump later reduced tariffs below their “Liberation Day” highs (yet still higher than they were at the start of the year). But the damage had been done: For two months, her product was out of stock. Over the past year, Benike had to cut staff from five employees to three. “I cashed in my retirement and didn’t pay myself all summer, went through all my family savings to just stay afloat,” Benike said. “I would say, conservatively, we had half a million in lost revenue because of the tariffs.”

Benike and other small business owners like her could find some relief if the U.S. Supreme Court rules that Trump overstepped his legal authority when he issued tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA)—a ruling that could come as soon as today. If the court rules against Trump, Benike could potentially get a refund for some of the $50,000 in tariffs she did pay over the past year, but that would hardly be the end of her troubles. 

Uncertain of how quickly such refunds could be sent to the many thousands of Americans who paid IEEPA tariffs, Benike plans to join a class action lawsuit in hopes of expediting the process. Her bigger worry is whether the Trump administration will find a way to unilaterally reinstate tariffs through other provisions of the law. “They’ve already announced that they will still be reinstating tariffs under other codes that may or may not affect me,” she told The Dispatch. “If there’s anything certain about this administration, it’s that everything is uncertain.”

One thing that is certain?  Trump just likes tariffs. “We got rich because of tariffs,” Trump told House Republicans at a retreat in January. Last week, the president threatened to back primary challengers to any Republicans who vote to overturn his tariffs.

Another thing we know with certainty is that, contrary to Trump’s claims, Americans and not foreigners are the ones paying for his tariffs. A study released by Kiel Institute for the World Economy in January found that American importers and consumers are absorbing 96 percent of the cost of Trump’s tariffs, while foreign exporters are eating just 4 percent of the cost. U.S. tariff revenue was roughly $24 billion per month higher in 2025 than it was in 2024.

When you combine Trump’s relentless desire to impose tariffs, the shaky legal ground upon which he has issued tariffs, and the fact that tariffs are paid by Americans, it all adds up to a very uncertain and chaotic business environment. Small business owners, the Americans who have the greatest difficulty in navigating the new tariff regime, told The Dispatch this week that uncertainty may be the biggest challenge they face.

At the start of 2025, Dan Turner of Turner Hydraulics in Pennsylvania ordered a custom item from China for a U.S. steel mill and expected to pay a 25 percent tariff. The product was already in transit when Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs, which would have required Turner to pay an $84,000 tariff on the $49,000 item. “We’re just hoping either the ship sinks or somebody comes to their senses before it hits the dock,” Turner told The Dispatch last year. 

“The day before it landed, they dropped the tariffs” to 55 percent, down from 170 percent, Turner said this week in an interview with The Dispatch. “We ended up taking a hit, but not nearly the hit we thought.”

The experience led Turner to search for other foreign suppliers, and he concluded his best available option was a company in Denmark. “And then the Greenland thing raises its ugly head,” Turner said, referring to Trump’s efforts to coerce Denmark into ceding Greenland to the United States. “All of a sudden we realize that … we don’t know which way to go at any time with any international supplier because any political issue could cause tariffs to escalate.”

Turner said his company’s revenue was down more than 10 percent in 2025. “I think the uncertainty makes it very difficult to plan ahead for capital expenses,” Turner told The Dispatch. He said he provides open-ended price quotes for tariffs to customers. “We basically spell out to the customer that your price is this at this tariff rate. If tariffs increase by 10 percent your rate will increase by X percentage,” he said. “We’ve had a few people that don’t want to order because they want to know what their cost is going in, and we can’t tell them.”

Hanna Scholz, owner of Bike Friday, a company that has built custom bicycles in Oregon for more than three decades, told The Dispatch this week that “we are being hit hard and in many different ways” by tariffs. Even though the bikes are built entirely in the United States, many components come from overseas, and she saw her U.S. sales drop about 17 percent in 2025. 

“Chaos is really expensive,” Scholz told The Dispatch. “We’re getting the tariff impact by pricing, but also disruption for timing—vendor availability, shipping timing.” In 2025, she was unable to provide pay raises to employees, had to cut hours for some employees, and did not replace two employees who retired.

Scholz is hopeful that a Supreme Court ruling against Trump’s emergency tariffs “could contribute to a little bit of calming of the anxiety of the American public,” she said. “I do think that the Supreme Court actually ruling that this use of trade tariffs was done illegally and is not appropriate—needs to be rolled back—would be a show of clear responsibility that institutions aren’t completely broken.”