The federal government
is being forced
to return more than
$165 billion
in collected tariffs
to domestic importers.
What have the cost
of the tariffs
meant for your business?
Yeah, last year was
really challenging.
It was unexpected.
In my 25 years in coffee
we've never even once considered
a tariff on our coffee
that we import.
So it was a curveball
and already in a
challenging business climate
where other costs are going up
like health care
shipping costs
things like that.
But this was just
one more headache
and again
not being expected at all.
We had to deal
with these costs.
One of the things that people
don't quite realize is
we had to pay for the tariff
before we even got
the product in the country.
So, this is before
we could even sell it.
We had to borrow money
to pay the tariff.
So we were then paying
interest costs
on the money
we borrowed for the tariffs.
So all these things
were compounding
and just making it
harder and harder for us.