How three businesses are coping with tariff limbo

It's hard doing business when you don't know what your costs will be in six weeks. But that's the situation many U.S. importers now find themselves in.

A federal appeals court struck down most of President Trump's worldwide tariffs last week, ruling that Trump had overstepped his authority in levying taxes of 10 to 50% on nearly everything the U.S. imports. But the tariffs remain in place for now, as importers wait for a final decision from the U.S. Supreme Court. Trump told reporters Tuesday that the administration would seek an expedited ruling. Here's how three businesses are coping in the meantime.

Monopoly maker

"It's been a roller-coaster," says Jonathan Silva, about the appeals court ruling, which came on the eve of a three-day weekend. "I really would have liked to have just enjoyed Labor Day with my family and gotten my kids back to school. But it led to a lot more work on my mind than I would have liked."

Silva's company markets high-end board games, which are mostly manufactured in China. After Trump ordered triple-digit tariffs on Chinese goods this spring, Silva explored shifting production to Vietnam or Brazil. And he's decided to make one of the company's 120 games — a specialty edition of Monopoly — in the United States, beginning next year. But it's difficult to make decisions when the tariff landscape keeps shifting.

"You can't do business that way," he says. "You can't grow. You can't hire. You can't invest. Having no certainty has handcuffed us."

Silva's business raised prices in July to help offset Trump's emergency tariffs. He's prepared to lower prices if the Supreme Court agrees that the tariffs should go away.

"If we can get any type of rollback or tariff relief," Silva says, "I would love nothing more than to roll back my pricing."

Looking for a lifejacket

Barton O'Brien runs a company in Maryland that sells collars, harnesses and lifejackets for dogs. In order to have merchandise for the busy spring selling-season, he needs to place orders soon with factories in Asia.

"We have to roll the dice," O'Brien says. "We have no idea what the price is going to be. That's a really tough negotiation to have with customers who are trying to plan things out."

O'Brien has told retailers that if tariffs go away, he'll keep prices steady. Otherwise, he'll have to charge more.

He's decided not to take a chance on importing goods from India, since Indian products now face one of Trump's highest tariffs: 50%.

"A 50% tariff isn't a tax," O'Brien says. "That's an embargo."

He already canceled an order of winter sweaters from India that were supposed to go on sale this month.

"Our fall collection that we worked on for over a year," O'Brien says, "we're not going to have them at all."

He's frustrated that Congress hasn't done more to rein in the president's tariffs, and says many of the small business owners he talks to are not optimistic about the judicial process.

"Nobody has faith in the Supreme Court," he says. "We just assume they're going to rubber stamp it for the administration, regardless of the precedent they're setting."

Not popping any champagne corks

The administration has been collecting tens of billions of dollars a month in tariffs — money that may have to be refunded if the Supreme Court agrees that the levies are illegal.

"It would be nice to get some of that back," says wine merchant Patrick Allen of Columbus, Ohio. "It would definitely help. But just being able to make more long-term plans would be more helpful than getting that back now."

Allen says it was difficult to place orders for European wine during the spring and summer when Trump was threatening to add tariffs of 20, 50 or even 200%.

"We've been kind of ordering in fits and starts, and our inventory is much lower than it normally would be," Allen says. "So as a result, we've got lost sales and lost income."

Trump ultimately struck a trade deal with the European Union that calls for a 15% tariff. Wineries in France and Italy might absorb some of that cost, Allen says, but the rest is passed on to retailers and shoppers in the U.S.

"At the very high end, people that are paying hundreds of dollars for a bottle are not going to worry about paying $15 more for a bottle," Allen says. " I think it's a lot of the wines in the middle will be jumping from $19 to $25 or $25 to $35 that are going to suffer the most."

Allen has begun looking for new sources of revenue, offering wine tastings and even leading a tour of wine country in France.

"Just trying to get people to understand that all of this money that's supposedly coming to [the U.S.] government is coming directly out of their pockets, not from foreign governments," he says.