Small Businesses Against Tariffs participants Rebecca Melsky and Eva St. Clair—co-owners of the company Princess Awesome—appeared on the Financial Times‘ News Briefing podcast to talk about how the tariffs are impacting their business, and hurting the American economy:
Marc Filippino (host): How did you absorb the costs without passing them on to customers?
Eva St. Clair: We cut our salaries, we cut production, and actually. The moment that we’re experiencing the repercussions from that is right now. We are at our lowest inventory levels in 10 years.
Marc Filippino: So, the Supreme Court did not rule on your specific lawsuit, but it did rule against the tariff.
What have the days looked like since then, because the administration has imposed this 150 days for the Trade Act of 1974? There’s obviously still the bilateral trade deals with certain countries that are in effect. How do you operate in this kind of uncertain time?
Eva St. Clair: There is still a huge amount of uncertainty. It was absolutely a win at the Supreme Court, but we don’t know what’s coming with the tariffs. It’s also a giant question mark if we’re actually going to get refunds. It does feel like there’s somewhat more certainty than there was a year ago, because at least from now until July 23rd, we know what to expect.
It’s not like tomorrow, you know, the president can decide that tariffs on Bangladesh are gonna be 65 per cent, right? That was what we were living under last year.