Name: Small businesses under Trump’s tariffs: ‘I’m so angry that my own government has done this to me’
Uploaded: 2025-06-17T15:42:39.000Z
Duration: 8 min 26 s
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We're back with our business leaders series, where we talk to small business owners from coast to coast about President Trump's tariffs. Some, they're happy with them. Many are struggling. Today, we head to the great state of Ohio, some may say greatest state, to hear from Earthquaker Devices, a guitar pedal manufacturer based in Akron. It launched in 2004, when musician Jamie Stillman successfully repaired his own guitar pedal. The business now has 35 employees and sells more than 40 types of devices. Jamie's wife and the co-owner, Julie Robbins, joins me now.

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Julie, really appreciate your time. You are a U.S. manufacturer, but you do source some parts from overseas. Talk about the effect tariffs have had on your business.

Yes, first of all, thank you so much for having me, Phil. And I'd also like to thank you for giving a voice to other small business owners and other members of the Main Street Alliance.

So yes, as you mentioned, we're a U.S. manufacturer. We do everything here in downtown Akron, Ohio. And basically, our products use over 900, to be precise, 961 different components.

And these are sourced from over 14 different countries of origin. So we import everything, but then we do all the manufacturing here. Due to the tariffs, our prices are rising drastically, and it's also created a market disruption and impacted our demand.

Yeah, I was just going to ask, when you talk about your prices are rising significantly, are those being passed on? How are you weathering that?

Well, we need to pass them on, but we're unable to calculate the exact price increase due to the chaos around the tariffs. They're constantly changing from week to week. So we're unable to implement a price increase yet.

But just an example, we have a product that without tariffs, it was $129, and we have about a 15% net profit on that. If the Chinese tariffs stay in place, we'd have to raise the price about 23% to maintain a profit margin on it.

One of the questions I always have is, how do you plan right now? What's the outlook for your business for the rest of this year, in this moment?

Well, we are down about 15% for the year. April was down nearly 30%. We are definitely seeing issues with consumer demand. Consumer sentiment is really low right now.

So we're forecasting that we'll be down. We're looking to save costs any way that we can, and really just paying attention to how things are changing. We have a lot of data, so we are always checking our data as every change goes into effect.

But it's made things really challenging for any kind of long-term planning or product launches. So we've had to delay or even scrap product launches. And that's really unfortunate because a lot of our revenue is based on new products.

Before I let you go, just your role in the community since inception. How do you guys view yourself in Akron?

Well, if you know Akron, you know that we were really devastated when the rubber companies left and moved their manufacturing elsewhere in the 70s and 80s. In fact, where I am right now, we're right across the street from the former BF Goodrich factory.

So for us living and growing up in this place, we really wanted to create and maintain good jobs here. So jobs that pay a living wage, that have paid time off and benefits and health care, retirement planning. And we feel that that's incredibly important for our community.

So even though it always would have been more affordable to manufacture overseas, we've always prioritized having jobs here in Ohio. We are now actually considering for the first time offshoring our manufacturing due to the chaos around the tariffs.

Our competitors overseas, they are not dealing with these issues. They don't have these extra fees. And so it's like the U.S. is basically the least competitive place to be manufacturing.

The business, once again, is Earthquaker Devices. It's based in Akron, Ohio. Check it out if you're in Northeast Ohio. Julie Robbins, really appreciate your time. Thanks so much.

So Americans reeling in their spending in the wake of President Trump's tariffs. That's according to new data from the Commerce Department, which said consumers save more money in April compared to just one month earlier.

They're also spending mostly on necessities, such as housing, health care and groceries.

And I want to bring in Stu Leonard. He's the CEO of Stu Leonard's Grocery Stores, a small regional chain in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

Stu, you source much of your food from U.S.-based suppliers. Have you noticed any disruption in the supply chain because of tariffs?

No. You know what? There's there's a couple groups of products here in Mexico and Canada for fresh foods tariff free under the NAFTA Act.

So we have like, you know, salmon's really hot right now. We have avocados, which is really the number one fruit in our in our whole produce section here.

No tariffs on that. So we haven't raised the price. Prices are the same as they were. You wouldn't even notice.

Here's where you do notice a tariff. Things like this with bananas. OK, we're getting them from from South America.

And then also, we were getting cherries from Chile. But, you know, California is lighting up right now.

We're in the local produce for America right now. So a lot of things that we were buying from Chile and so forth, we're able to to get from California, from Florida right now.

And we're coming into local New Jersey, Connecticut and New York are producing some great stuff.

So here on the lead, we talk to small business owners just about every day about Trump's tariffs.

Some are in favor. Some aren't. One sector seeing some relief has been domestic seafood.

Do you reap any of the benefits of that? Well, oh, yeah.

You know, instead of buying, like, for instance, salmon from Norway, like like I saw you did this little thing here.

But this is one of our nice 15 pound salmons that we have. The price is not going up on this right now.

The same thing with things like this. I know I heard you're a customer there, Phil.

So here's something you would love for Father's Day. You know, right here is a big tomahawk steak.

No increase in price on those. They're not there. There's domestic local product.

So I think what we're seeing right now is there's a couple of things that are being impacted, like for instance, they don't grow bananas in the United States right here.

What am I going to do? I got a tariff on those things. So what I've been doing with them is splitting it.

So I'm eating half the tariff and the suppliers eating half the tariff.

That's going pretty well. Some of the time, though, I'm not even I'm just taking the tariff on if you're a small supplier, because I don't want to.

We don't want to hurt a small business that's selling to Stu Leonard right now.

Yeah. Please wrap that up. I texted my wife. We're going to be coming by to pick up that steak.

That's a one sitting steak in the Mattingly household. Stu Leonard.

Let's do Leonard's Grocery Stores. Appreciate it, my friend. Thanks so much.

Hey, hey, Phil. I know I know you're you're on a tight thing here, but it's water safety time this year.

Right. This is drowning season. You notice that tick tocker with three million people just had her three year old drowned in a pool.

I feel so terrible about it. But be careful with your kids around the water right now.

OK, watch them. And it's like designated driver for drinking.

You need a designated watcher for your kids around the pool.

Please be safe around the water and protect your kids.

I absolutely second that message. Really appreciate it, my friend. Thanks so much.

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Small businesses under Trump’s tariffs: ‘I’m so angry that my own government has done this to me’

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