Reuters: Trump gets tariffs; Americans get price hikes
Association of Washington Business: Bumps to international trade hit hard in Washington
Washington state is one of the most trade-dependent states in the country, with 40 percent of jobs tied to international trade
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Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, held a virtual press conference with Barry Barr, Founder of Seattle-based KAVU True Outdoor Wear; Chuck Horne, Head of Finance at Uwajimaya Asian Market in Seattle; Erik Nelson, Founder of Vancouver-based HDG Building Materials; and Alex Jacquez, Chief of Policy and Advocacy for Groundwork Collaborative to sound the alarm on how President Trump’s trade war and steep new tariffs on nearly every country are raising costs, driving down business, and creating chaos for families, small businesses, and the overall economy.
Washington state has one of the most trade-dependent economies of any state in the country, with 40 percent of jobs in the state tied to international commerce. In 2024, Washington exported $57.8 billion of goods to the world, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), making Washington state the 9th-largest state exporter of goods last year. Washington state is the top U.S. producer of apples, blueberries, hops, pears, spearmint oil, and sweet cherries—all of which risk losing vital export markets due to retaliatory tariffs from key trading partners including Canada. Additionally, more than 12,000 small and medium-sized companies in Washington state export goods and will struggle to absorb the cost of retaliatory tariffs. Trump’s tariffs during his first term were extremely costly for Washington state and failed to achieve their goals—and Trump’s second-term tariffs are much worse.
“For all his talk about ‘trade deals,’ apparently a good deal to Trump is this: Americans pay more. Because that is the basis of every so-called ‘deal’ that Trump has announced so far. American families paying a whole lot more than they were paying just a few months ago,” said Senator Murray on the press call today. “Look, I want to support American manufacturing and American jobs—we all do! But that’s not what Trump’s trade war will accomplish! It will actually do the exact opposite. In fact, it’s already killing jobs and dragging down economic growth across the country. It will to cause small businesses to raise prices, and some of them will shutter altogether.”
“There is no ‘making it in America’ when the ‘it’ in question is coffee or green tea which we cannot grow at scale here in the U.S. There is no ‘making it in America’ when even making something here requires parts and raw material from across the globe. There is just higher prices for working families, tighter margins for struggling businesses, and more worry for families and businesses being pushed to the edge,” Senator Murray continued. “I’ve been saying it since the beginning, I will keep saying it until this pointless trade war finally ends: Congress needs to step in and we need to assert our authority on tariffs. There is no good reason for us to be picking fights with our trading partners, and especially our close allies like Canada and the EU. There is no good reason for us to let Trump raise taxes on families. There is no good reason for us to let Trump bankrupt small businesses. We need to end this chaos. We need Republicans to say ‘enough’ and vote with us to reverse these tariffs.”
“We are already seeing the negative impact of the trade war for our U.S. products. Increased prices on our cotton canvas, zippers, threads and buckles. Even if we wanted to expand our production in the USA, we would have to purchase sewing machines abroad, as the U.S. does not make them, therefore, the machines would be hit with the higher tariffs, making it entirely too expensive to import. As a small company that innovates, we have no choice but to raise our prices due to the tariffs. We have currently seen a 10 to 25 percent increase in our retail prices, which will hit consumers in the coming months and next year. And I don’t see any reprieve with the new sweeping tariffs announced today,” said Barry Barr, founder of KAVU True Outdoor Wear, an outdoor apparel store that was founded in Seattle in 1993. “These policies have taken almost all our working capital out of the company, and it’s making it incredibly hard to survive, let alone be profitable. Right now, all our projected profits are going directly to the U.S. government in the form of increased tariffs. In reality, these are working as a tax on businesses and American citizens. So, it’s not fair to either the businesses or the consumers. We’re having to raise our prices to our customers as the only option to stay in business, and therefore we’re seeing a decrease in sales. This means that we’re now facing tough decisions, such as having to cut positions and employees that have worked for the company for over 20 years. In addition, we’re seeing a huge negative impact around the world on U.S. brands, most consumers worldwide have united against the USA and USA brands, and we are suffering huge losses in future international sales through the tariff war. This is especially noticeable in markets where we have worked very, very hard to enter for decades, like the United Kingdom, Scandinavia and other countries in the European Union. Businesses in all sectors need stability. We manufacture six to eight months lead times, and these unnecessary duty swings does not allow us to plan and execute our goals. What we need to thrive is stability, and not chaos.”
“Few things are more real than food. As a specialty grocer, Uwajimaya sells a lot of product that’s imported from Asia. And just to make sure that everybody understands this, a tariff is, in effect, an import tax, it is paid to our government, not by China, not by Japan, but by importers here in America. And while these fall especially heavily on companies like Uwajimaya, tariffs affect all grocers, even the large ones, even those who don’t import as much as we do, but all grocers. So, some people argue that the companies should eat the tariffs. The reality is that grocers operate on razor thin margins… For every dollar that a consumer spends in a grocery store, after that grocer pays its suppliers, takes care of its employees, pays the rent, other expenses, there might be of that dollar two and a half to three cents left, and that’s before the grocer has to pay any interest and loans to banks, and, of course, income taxes. So, all said and done, out of the dollar that the consumer gives to the grocers, there might be two cents that are left. So, a new tariff basically increases the cost that that grocer pays for the product, and if the grocer eats that cost, they’re not going to make any money,” said Chuck Horne, CFO at Uwajimaya Asian Market in Seattle, a popular local grocery store chain that was founded in 1928. “We have many customers, particularly senior citizens, shopping with us for decades, who live on fixed, modest incomes because they don’t have much, if any, extra money, increased food costs can cause meaningful hardships for them. So, for a thoughtful grocer, it’s a balancing act. We have to sustain the business while being considerate of our customers. We’re not looking to profit from the situation, but it’s a challenging set of circumstances, and unfortunately, the challenges in navigating this have been made even more complicated by the absolute chaos we’ve all seen since April.”
“We’ve had to apologize to clients mid-project,” said Erik Nelson, a Main Street Alliance member and the founder of HDG Building Materials, a Vancouver-based company that supplies, premium grade product for commercial, residential, and civic construction projects across the country for architects, landscape architects, builders, developers and owners. “A customer in Colorado ordered custom cut and finished stone from China, originally priced under a 25 percent tariff from 2017—but by the time it shipped, the rate had jumped to 55 percent. These swings erode trust and margins, and it’s not just tariffs—we’ve experienced the weaker dollar, [which] adds six percent to our costs on recent shipments from Europe. These increases compound, contractors mark up our prices, and consumers feel it in their final prices. And the bigger picture is… in many cases, we import what we no longer produce. Tariffs on those materials don’t bring jobs back, they simply make construction more expensive. HDG pairs the best global materials with U.S.-made products whenever possible. We support American manufacturing and innovation—but we also need access to world class components to stay competitive. So, in summary, tariffs and currency instability drive up costs, strain material options, delay projects and they stifle innovation. We say, let U.S. businesses compete on quality and value, using all their resources—rather than with one hand behind our backs owing to artificially inflated prices caused by unpredictable trade policies.”
“We’ve seen economic data that very definitively prove that these tariffs are imposing major headwinds on the U.S. economy. Just this morning, the Labor Market Survey came out, showing that we added fewer jobs than we expected to, and also that we had major revisions for the last two jobs reports, meaning that our economy has been weaker in the labor market for the last three months than we thought it had been. If you look under the hood, the entirety of our jobs creation is being driven by healthcare and education, two sectors, everything else is either frozen or down. President Trump says he wants to bring back manufacturing—well, manufacturing jobs have decreased the last three months, construction, logistics, warehousing, all of the jobs that you would associate with an industrial boom are either frozen in place or they are down. Companies are not hiring as much. They are slowing down,” said Alex Jacquez, the Chief of Policy and Advocacy at Groundwork Collaborative, an economic advocacy group. “So what this is doing is raising prices for consumers at the end, or it is raising prices for our manufacturers, as discussed, these are 40 percent of our imports are for manufacturers who are then exporting products, just making their businesses less competitive with these kind of blanket on again, off again, tariffs… Consumers are spending less, and I think it’s hard to argue doing that when you don’t know what your prices are going to be in a week or a month… It’s not going to be okay for small businesses, as noted, not operating on large inventories, not operating on large margins, and having to make those paychecks work week to week, month to month. Think that is where we are going to see the real impact… The economic uncertainty that has been injected into the economy by Trump’s trade policies have had a negative effect on employment and jobs, a negative effect on growth and a negative effect on prices. All of this starts to add up to something that looks like stagflation, which should be just another headwind for the economy, and meanwhile, none of the goals that President Trump has advanced through his tariff agenda have come to fruition yet. All we are doing is hurting workers, hurting businesses, hurting manufacturers.”
Senator Murray has been a vocal opponent of Trump’s chaotic trade war from the very start and has been lifting up the voices of people in Washington state harmed by this administration’s approach to trade and calling on Republicans to end Trump’s trade war—which Congress has the power to do—and take back Congress’ Constitutionally-granted power to impose tariffs. In April, Senator Murray brought together leaders across Washington state who highlighted how Trump’s ongoing trade war is already a devastating hit to Washington state’s economy, businesses, and our agriculture sector. Senator Murray also took to the Senate floor to lay out how Trump’s chaotic trade war is seriously threatening our economy, American businesses, families’ retirement savings, and so much else.
Murray has also been sounding the alarm on Trump’s tariffs in events she’s held across Washington state. Recently, Senator Murray held a roundtable discussion in Tacoma with local businesses and ports, met with farmers in Yakima to discuss the consequences of Trump’s tariffs, and held a roundtable discussion in Vancouver at a local metal fabrication company to highlight how Trump’s trade war is hurting businesses and our economy Washington state. Senator Murray also met recently with small business owners in Seattle’s University District to hear how Trump’s tariffs and the broader economic uncertainty are affecting them, and later she met with farmers in Skagit County to discuss tariffs, and visited Blaine near the Canadian border to highlight the impacts of Trump’s trade war.
Senator Murray’s full remarks, as delivered, are below:
“Thank you, for joining me today. We’re here to explain how tariffs work to a President who clearly doesn’t understand what he is doing and doesn’t care whether his policies bankrupt families and small businesses.
“Now, earlier this year, when Trump announced an all-out, worldwide trade war, the response was swift, and furious. ‘Oh my god—he can’t be serious.’ ‘Oh no, this is going to end my business.’ ‘This is going to drive up my grocery bill.’ And of course—‘Is he really that stupid?’
“Well, after months of chaos, months of businesses trying to figure out what policies they actually need to build their plans around; months of pointless uncertainty, driven by Trump—spouting off new tariff rates, setting new deadlines, and turning tariffs on and off like a two-year-old with a light switch—Trump’s day of tariff reckoning is now upon us, as many new, painful taxes are going into effect on goods Americans buy every single day.
“For all his talk about ‘trade deals,’ apparently a good deal to Trump is this: Americans pay more. Because that is the basis of every so-called ‘deal’ that Trump has announced so far. American families paying a whole lot more than they were paying just a few months ago.
“Beyond that, it’s impossible for us to really understand what the deals Trump is announcing even are. As usual he’s making all sorts of outlandish claims, like that Japan is going to invest $550 billion dollars in the U.S or Europe is going to buy $750 billion dollars’ worth of American energy. Only for us to find out from these other countries that these numbers are totally made up—or that huge parts of his so-called ‘deals’ are non-binding and unenforceable.
“And then, there are all the othercountries across the world that Trump is unleashing massive new tariffs on every day! So unfortunately, the answers to the questions everyone had when Trump first announced his trade war are now all too clear.
“Yes, Trump is serious. Yes, he is that stupid. And, yes, he is about to send costs for families and businesses skyrocketing.
“Because that is what tariffs do, and you don’t have to ask a Nobel prize economist to understand it!
“In fact, that’s the point of this call. I want to lift up the voices of people on the ground in Washington state—which is one of the most trade-dependent states in the entire country. 40 percent of jobs in our state are tied directly to international trade!
“I want everyone to understand how businesses are being hurt by this chaos and how prices are going to go up. This is the reality that our reality TV President doesn’t seem to understand.
“Look, I want to support American manufacturing and American jobs—we all do! But that’s not what Trump’s trade war will accomplish! It will actually do the exact opposite.
“In fact, it’s already killing jobs and dragging down economic growth across the country. It will cause small businesses to raise prices, and some of them will shutter altogether. The entire premise of this trade war is unimaginably stupid.
“There is no ‘making it in America’ when the ‘it’ in question is coffee or green tea which we cannot grow at scale here in the U.S. There is no ‘making it in America’ when even making something here requires parts and raw material from across the globe. There is just higher prices for working families, tighter margins for struggling businesses, and more worry for families and businesses being pushed to the edge.
“And one of the most remarkable things about all of this—which Republicans are being dead silent on right now—is that just weeks after showering trillions in tax cuts on billionaires, what Trump is doing here, is putting new taxes on every day Americans.
“Trump is taxing our groceries. He’s taxing baby essentials. Trump is taxing back to school supplies. He is taxing electronics, and cars, and video games, and just about anything you can think of. Trump wants to call them ‘trade deals,’ but the reality is, he is slapping sales tax after sales tax on working families.
“So my message to Republicans—you just passed legislation to cut taxes for billionaires. Do you really want to raise them for everyone else? I’ve been saying it since the beginning, I will keep saying it until this pointless trade war finally ends: Congress needs to step in and we need to assert our authority on tariffs.
“There is no good reason for us to be picking fights with our trading partners, and especially our close allies like Canada and the EU. There is no good reason for us to let Trump raise taxes on families. There is no good reason for us to let Trump bankrupt small businesses.
“We need to end this chaos. We need Republicans to say ‘enough’ and vote with us to reverse these tariffs.
“And they don’t have to just take my word about how important this is, because I have some people here today with a firsthand perspective on what is at stake.
“So, with that, I’ll turn it over to Barry Barr, founder of KAVU, which is one of the many great companies based in Washington state.”
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