So Much Uncertainty: Businesses Worry About Trumps Many Tariff Plans

For Klem’s, a general store in rural Massachusetts, each year has seemed more challenging than the last.First, there was the pandemic, then a global supply chain breakdown that left the store short of lawn mowers and shoes.Next, a spate of inflation raided American pocketbooks.

All along, Amazon continued to pull customers away from brick and mortar stores like Klem’s.Now Jessica Bettencourt, Klem’s owner, says she is facing a new challenge that has left her wondering if the store — which was started by her grandparents in 1949 — will survive.The sweeping tariffs that President-elect Donald J.

Trump has promised to impose could raise the price of foreign-made products and cut into her business’s already slim profits, she says.“A huge tariff increase would potentially decimate us,” she said.“A retail store like mine has slim margins to begin with.” It wouldn’t take a whole lot before “all of a sudden, those slim little pennies that you might make are gone,” she said.Mr.

Trump comes into office having floated a wide variety of tariff plans.He has proposed a universal tariff on nearly all imports, plus levies ranging from 10 to 200 percent on products from China, Canada, Mexico, the European Union and elsewhere.Mr.

Trump has promised to use tariffs for multiple goals: cajoling companies to make their products in the United States, funding tax cuts, persuading other countries to stem the flows of drugs and migrants and even forcing Denmark to cede Greenland to the United States.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe....