HOUSTON – A year after President Trump issued an executive order imposing steep tariffs on most of the United States' major trading partners, small businesspeople across the country say they're suffering.
According to an analysis of the most recent Census Bureau trade data done by the small business advocacy group We Pay the Tariffs, the emergency tariffs Trump imposed last year cost American businesses $151 billion in the year that ended in February.
In the April 2025 executive order, Trump said the tariffs were necessary to protect "American businesses and workers."
The Supreme Court has since ruled the tariffs, collected under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), were applied illegally. The U.S. Court of International Trade has ruled they must be paid back to the companies that collected them.
Despite promises it would do so, though, the administration has yet to issue any refunds, and Trump has imposed new tariffs – on steel, aluminum, and pharmaceuticals – to replace the ones the courts overturned.
Luis Torres, a senior business economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, said, "You can see those comments of how those costs, those tariffs, you know, they've impacted them, costing increased selling prices, margin losses, also the uncertainty surrounding them."
Tariffs and uncertainty
Houston-based Misfit Toys is a prime example of a small business wrestling with the higher prices and uncertainty associated with the tariffs.
Located just off a busy highway in Houston's Heights neighborhood, the store has built its customer base on the trade in vintage toys.
"I'd say 70%-80% of the products that come into the store are used items, previously owned. And that's what people are looking for, older things," said store owner Daniel Rivera. "But that's never going to be enough to lure people into a retail setting, if we don't also have some of the latest items that are hot."
To lure customers, Rivera said Misfit Toys still relies on the sales of new toys tied into summer blockbuster movies and Christmas sales.
Those new toys are largely produced in China and Japan. Since President Trump's tariffs took effect a year ago, Rivera says he hasn't been able to afford to stock up for either season.
"The big box retailers will be fine," Rivera said. "People go to Target, also for soap and, you know, drinks and food. And while they're there, the kids will grab a toy. But here we will not be getting any of that summer action, any of that money. And we will certainly see that [on] Christmas."
Rivera's wife and business operations manager, Paulina Gamino, says Misfit Toys can't afford to absorb all the cost of the tariffs the way competitors like Target, Walmart, and Amazon can.
Raising prices is their only alternative for what Gamino refers to as "mom-and-pop" stores.
"And so now we're talking about brand-new toys that maybe would have been $25. Now, it's like $40, $45 for a brand-new toy. That's such a huge jump and increase," Gamino said.
To adapt, Gamino said, Misfit Toys is focusing even more on hard-to-get vintage toys. Layoffs in Houston's tech sector are forcing many unemployed workers to sell off their collections, which the store buys at a discount and resells.
"Our gross sales have gone up. We are able to employ more people, but our profits have gone down a lot," Gamino said.
Not all businesses have that cushion of being able to resell collectables.
Kacie Wright manages Houghton Horns, a brass instrument specialty shop near Fort Worth, Texas. The business sells student instruments made in China and professional-quality instruments made in Germany, the United Kingdom, and Japan, as well as cases and accessories made in India and Brazil.
"We've had to raise prices," Wright said. "We've been paying [tariffs of] about 40%, and we absorbed some of that and raised prices about 20%, but then we also had to cut out accessories. They used to come with mouthpieces and cleaning kits, and now you just get the instrument and the case, so the customers are paying 20% more for less."
Wright said that uncertainty about the final price of instruments with tariffs included, is leading customers to hold off making purchases.
"If a customer wants to order a custom trombone from us, we can say, 'Well, at current pricing, it might be $7,000, but then the tariffs could change tomorrow, and your price could end up being $6,000 or $9,000.'"
Additionally, these instruments take three or four months to make, and backlogs in orders can add more than a year's wait to delivery times. "So, if a customer wants to place an order now, we have no idea what price to charge them," Wright said.
Tariffs on manufacturers, too
A major argument Trump has made in favor of the tariffs is that they could encourage more businesses to move manufacturing back to the U.S. from overseas. But for many small businesses, the so-called onshoring of manufacturing isn't an option.
Missoula, Montana-based FLATED, a company that sells truck tops, truck camper shells, and other automotive products made with a PVC drop-stitch inflatable fabric, has no other choice but to manufacture in Vietnam to make a profit.
"I think that there's something that people aren't talking about in this whole tariff conversation," CEO Ryan Guay said. "And that's the fact that American businesses do rely on overseas manufacturing, and when those costs and with the tariffs go up unexpectedly, it makes it a lot easier for the factories in Asia, overseas, other places, to really simply cut out the American business and just sell directly to online in the States, or even directly to Amazon."
Guay said he would love to be able to manufacture his products in the United States, but doing so would cost more than his business could afford.
"And not only [because] setting up the factories here … is obviously cost prohibitive, but also the fact that the materials are not produced here," Guay said. "So, even if you were making the products here in the States, you would still be paying the tariffs on the raw goods to come in to actually produce that product."
The U.S. Department of the Treasury did not respond to a request from NPR for a comment about when, or whether, the emergency tariffs would be refunded.
Asked if such refunds would make a difference, Guay said he doesn't hold out much hope.
"A refund would be great, but we're not betting on it, based on our experience last year of tariffs, ups, downs," he said.
Misfit Toys' Gamino is blunter.
"I have no expectation that we will see this money. We are the last in the line, as a small mom-and-pop who's not buying huge quantities," Gamino said.
Before the tariffs, Misfit Toys had been planning on a major expansion, lining up business deals with wholesale toy distributors that source their products from China and Japan. Rivera said that's off the table for at least as long as Trump remains in the White House.
"Because it could be tomorrow that he just changes his mind again," Rivera said, "and he pulls his hand into a hat and says, 'Because of this, I can do it again. I can raise tariffs again.' So, we're not convinced it's over."
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