I have three things to say about this.
As the business manager and part owner of Houghton Horns, a specialty brass instrument store in north Texas, Kacie Wright deals with President Donald Trump’s tariffs every day.
“I wake up every morning and I check the news and see how many hours I need to spend changing prices on our website that day,” Wright said Thursday in a press call put on by We Pay the Tariffs, a coalition of more than 1,100 small business across the United States.
Prices have not come down over the past year, she continued. She cited a French horn as an example.
“Two years ago we charged $3,024.75 and today we’d charge $3,685.13,” Wright said. “Plus, we had to cut out a lot of the accessories — they used to come with a mouthpiece and cleaning kit. So customers are paying 20% more for less.”
Several other small business owners on the call said that they have had similar experiences. Costs have risen. Sales have fallen. Cash flow has been tight. Paperwork has proliferated and persistent uncertainty over tariff policies is stifling consumer demand and creating a daily headache for small business owners who are already contending with narrow margins and significant inflation.
It has been nearly a year since Trump announced sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs on April 2, 2025, invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act through an executive order. These expanded on the tariffs he had previously imposed without Congressional oversight.
We Pay the Tariffs, which includes more than a dozen signatories in the Houston area, puts the direct cost of these tariffs in the range of a a quarter-trillion dollars over the past year.
Between March 2025 and January of this year, according to the group’s analysis, businesses across the United States paid $246 billion in “presidential tariffs” — the tariffs Trump imposed, using various mechanisms, during his first and second terms as president.
About $26 billion of the nationwide total was paid by Texas businesses such as Houghton Horns, according to We Pay the Tariffs, including $13 billion in IEEPA tariffs specifically.
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1. Kudos to We Pay The Tariffs for getting this message out in a timely fashion. It may be hard to remember now, what with all of the ICE atrocities and DOGE rampages and threats to democracy and five-hour TSA lines and wars nobody asked for, but the tariffs did a lot of damage early on not just to the economy but also to our relations with allies and trading partners. The whole “flood the zone with bullshit” strategy that the Trump regime and its enablers employ is there in part to make us all forget about the terrible things they’ve done in the past – and by “past”, I mean starting with yesterday – so it’s on us to periodically remind ourselves and others what we’ve been through.
2. There have of course been complaints from the beginning about the tariffs and the expense they have levied on businesses and consumers. A lot of those complaints have come from various business groups and farmers, and a lot of those making the complaints are Trump supporters. Not all of them, and some of them have expressed regret for their vote, but a significant number of them brought this on themselves. Any reported article that includes a quote from a tariff critic that doesn’t include an explanation about who that critic voted for in 2024, and how they feel about it now, is doing you a disservice. Let the Kamala voters say their “I told you so”s. Let the sorrowful erstwhile Trump voters give their mea culpas. And let the dead enders show themselves so we can mock them forevermore.
3. Putting those first two items together, the tariffs should still be a significant part of the 2026 election playbook. They contributed to inflation! They were unilaterally imposed by a President who didn’t have the power to do so! And all of the sycophantic Republican officeholders who blindly support Donald Trump will defend them, because they’re too cowardly to ever cross His Highness. Don’t let them off the hook.