KSHB 41 reporter Rachel Henderson covers neighborhoods in Wyandotte and Leavenworth counties. Share your story idea with Rachel.
Businesses say they’ve been keeping a close eye on the impact of tariffs, particularly with the back and forth between the U.S. and China.
“We’re certainly thinking about the future,” said Brett Goodwin, owner of The Learning Tree, which sells toys, books and gifts in Prairie Village, Kan.
Goodwin says it’s impossible not to hear the tariff talk, so his business decided to act.
“One thing we've done this year is try to frontload as much inventory as we can handle to prepare for the moment,” Goodwin said.
The store’s basement warehouse is stocked with an unusual abundance of items.
“Stocking up like this would be to prepare for the holidays or something,” Goodwin said. “What we thought would be useful would be to plan to make some big orders, take advantage of discounts, things like that now.”
Goodwin says his business is seeing price increases from about his vendors. The store has approximately 200 vendors from all over the world.
“Our profit margin is tight,” Goodwin said. “This is a local business, we employ local people, so we do our best, and we will continue to do our best, but we may have to increase prices.”
Goodwin’s not the only one making plans for the future.
“When you punch at the United States of America, President Trump is going to punch back harder,” said President Trump's Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, at a Wednesday address.
Despite postponing tariffs for dozens of other nations, Trump still raised tariffs on China to 125 percent for ‘retaliating’ against the United States.
The end goal?
“Better trade deals for the American worker,” Leavitt said.
Patrick Klima owns WyCo Vintage, which sells vintage shirts, band tees and collectibles.
Klima is already feeling tariff impacts with his business.
“We get these letters, and each box we have has a $370 fee attached to it,” Klima said.
Items he ordered from Canada that arrived Tuesday had fees he wasn’t expecting.
He said they’re related to tariffs.
“That’s just from Canada, we’re not talking the stuff from China, or you know, other countries where the tariffs are much higher,” Klima said. “This news is quite the shock to us because you build a business plan, you build it off margins and then all of a sudden, you’ve got this new 25 percent additional fee.”
The news also comes at a time when Klima is hoping to expand and open a Kansas location.
“With this kind of uncertainty, it definitely makes things difficult, and I imagine all businesses are having this same kind of thing happen right now,” Klima said.
He hasn’t seen price increases on merchandise customers will buy yet, but that doesn’t mean it’s off the table.
“Hopefully some kind of middle ground can be achieved and hopefully this tariff war thing cools down and there’s some pullback and we’re not going to experience all of this,” he said. “It’s really playing it by ear at this point, it feels like.”
As for customers like Carol Burrows, she’s taking a page out of Goodwin’s book and preparing ahead of time.
“If I want something, new shoes, I better get ‘em now,” Burrows said. “I don’t want to get caught when everything is expensive. I want to have what I need, and I can sit back, and hopefully things will straighten out.”