30-05-2025
Kansas City book box company feeling the impact of federal tariffs
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — When HUES Book Box started gaining traction on social media, owner Charmaine Merriweather saw the right time to change suppliers for their boxes.
'I had just gotten a large influx of new customers, and I was like, 'Great, let's up how many boxes we order at a time. This is the perfect time to switch to higher quality boxes and everything.''
While the order was being produced, she was notified that the shipping that was originally free to her, would cost $1400. That cost, she found out, was directly related to tariffs on foreign goods.
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'I was devastated, to say the least,' Merriweather said.
'I was like, 'Oh, my God,' I had just got to a point where it felt like we were sailing and this was where everything takes off and becomes a big business, you know? But we got hit like that.'
A federal appeals court ruled to allow President Donald Trump to continue to collect tariffs under an emergency powers law on Thursday.
While it's still unclear if the tariffs will remain permanent, White House senior counselor for trade and manufacturing Peter Navarro says, they're here to stay.
'The Trump tariff agenda is alive, well, healthy and will be implemented to protect you, to save your jobs and your factories and to stop shipping our wealth into four hands,' he said on Thursday.
Merriweather says she would raise prices to keep up with tariffs but says her customers would be priced out of her product that way.
'As a customer, I'm not paying an extra $10 for you to pick a book for me,' she said.
'Like that's it's not worth it to me personally.'
Another alternative would be to have her boxes manufactured in the United States, but she says the cost of moving production stateside is 150% higher than her original price per box.
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She suggested that the tariffs roll out over a period of time, giving business owners time to plan and to prepare for changes in prices.
'I understand wanting to bring more jobs to the U.S. I think that is a noble cause,' she said.
'Maybe we start looking at plans to implement that over like 10-15 years. And I don't think that trying to do that overnight in 30 days and 90 days is something that it's quite feasible.'
Merriweather says the impact the tariffs have on small businesses is stunting their growth.
'This is how all of the large companies have been able to build wealth is by utilizing our global economy,' she said on Thursday.
'When you do these big tariffs and you try to make drastic, huge changes immediately rather than having thought-out structure or plans for long term, it really mainly just hurts a little guy.'
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