20-04-2025
Aussie boss reveals huge cost of Trump vs China tariff war bloodbath: 'Scramble'
An Australian boss has been forced to shut down the US part of her business to avoid any further fallout from Donald Trump's tariffs against China. Sophia Argyropoulos has been running her RAQ Apparel swimwear company for nearly a decade, and while this decision was a "no-brainer", it's a massive hit.
The US President has escalated his tariffs against the import of Chinese goods multiple times, and the country now faces a jaw-dropping 245 per cent penalty. Argyropoulos told Yahoo Finance that this makes it virtually impossible to sell her swimwear to Americans.
"If we sell a bikini for $100 and it's made in China, even though it's coming from Australia and it's going into the US, the customer has to pay $245 before it's delivered," she said.
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"Who's going to do that? The math doesn't work."
RAQ has been specifically designed for women with a fuller bust and its founder said the skill needed to create each garment couldn't be done in Australia.
There are 66 different cup sizes available, and Argyropoulos said she struggled to find an Australian manufacturer that could bring her vision to life.
She cycled through several manufacturers until she settled on one in China."The way that they're cutting fabrics or the way that they're mapping out pattern pieces, or the way that they're doing their grading with CAD software, that expertise, that technical expertise, they have it there," she told Yahoo Finance.
All the garments are shipped from China to Australia and then to RAQ's customers.
The Melbourne-based boss said the US had become a great market for her company, making up 20 per cent of RAQ's revenue.
But the tariffs would have either forced her to take a massive hit on every product sold, or she would have had to hike prices for her customers to unaffordable prices.
Trump has been steadily lifting his tariff rate against China, but dozens of other countries have been given a 90-day pause on the penalty while they negotiate certain terms.
Argyropoulos said the chaos of the tariff rollout had caused her too many headaches, and she didn't want to wake up to another morning where the situation had become even worse.
"Every time it changes, it impacts us," she said.
"We have to scramble and try work out what our policy is going to be, how that's going to impact our profitability. Uncertainty, I think, in itself, is a huge tax."
So, she decided to shut RAQ off for Americans.
"To be honest, it was a relief to switch it off, because then we don't have that uncertainty," she said.
"We don't have to be at the whim of every change of every tariff."
She's hoping to pivot to the UK market in the meantime and hopes to reopen the US side of the site if the tariffs are brought down to an affordable level.
Trump threatened the tariff against China could hit 245 per cent because the Asian superpower introduced "retaliatory" tariffs against the US.
Despite that being an incredibly high rate, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it would no longer be paying attention to the US president's 'numbers game'.
China's Ministry of Finance called the ever-increasing tariffs coming from the US a 'joke' because they don't have 'any economic significance'.
Yahoo Finance contributor David Llewelyn-Smith fears the tit-for-tat between China and the US "could, in the worst case, collapse the Australian dollar, perhaps to as low as 40 cents".
"Commodities, interest rates and house prices could all be impacted by the trade war Australia has been swept up in," he said.
In the meantime, Aussie businesses with US customers are faced with uncertainty if their products are made in China.
Australia's trade minister, Don Farrell, said the government would "always stand up for Australia and support local businesses and Australian jobs".
"This includes advocating for no tariffs on Australian products and for a de-escalation in global trade tensions, while promoting greater trade diversification," he in to access your portfolio
