BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) — A tariff tug-of-war is confusing consumers and causing headaches for business owners.
Scripps News Group reported earlier this week that a federal appeals court temporarily paused a lower court’s decision that had blocked most of President Trump’s sweeping tariffs. This grants an administrative stay while it considers the government's request for broader relief.
READ MORE: Federal appeals court revives most of Trump’s tariffs — for now
As for how this back-and-forth has impacted businesses, I took that question to two locally-owned businesses; one with products made solely in the United States and the other relies on imports for the goods they sell.
Competing with international manufacturers is nothing new to Mark Andol, owner of the Made in America Store.
In 2007, he hit a bump in the road when his company, General Welding & Fabricating, was making a load-bearing post that goes inside plastic fencing.
"I was doing well with it," Andol said. "We had a plant set up. My customer wanted more money out of it. My customer said they had somebody in Florida. Well, it ended up not being Florida, it was China. For price, they went to China and I lost that account overnight."
He went from having 72 employees to laying off about 40, to deal with the adjustment between 2007 and 2010.
"That's what caused me to take a look at what we make here, where we are at as a country and open the Made In America Store," Andol said.
The Made In America Store, located in Elma, is the only store in America and the world that sells vendor products that are 100% made in the U.S. Andol told me even the packaging is U.S.-made. The store reached a milestone year 15 years of business in April.
When it comes to tariffs, he said it is one of the best things to happen to his store and that it will benefit America in the long run.
"My whole goal for 15 years has been to just create more demand for Made in America products and educate people," Andol said. "Made in America matters, everybody's got to do their part to get this done. I think it's something that needs to be done."
Meanwhile, in the Elmwood Village, a slightly different story. Shop Craft, which has been in business for the last 10 years, sells work from artists who work or live 90 miles from its location, but owner Christa Penner said all of their materials are sourced outside of the U.S.
"Designing the work here or even authors, we carry local books but they're not necessarily able to be printed here because we don't always have those resources," Penner said. "We don't even have those resources within the United States."
The same thing goes for the store's t-shirts. They are designed and printed locally, but the shirts themselves are made overseas.
"Some of our artists...a lot of their business is designing things like stickers and pins and those sorts of things, have had to pause some of their ordering, even with like the price of things we've had to increase pricing here because materials have gone up, because of the tariffs or like the anticipation of what the cost is going to be," Penner said.
Additionally, Penner said our Canadian neighbors are a large part of the Western New York economy, and since tourism is down, the store is feeling it too.
