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Major orders canceled. Containers of products left stranded overseas. No roadmap for what comes next.The Trump administration raised tariffs on goods from China to 145% in early April. Since then, small business owners who depend on imports from China to survive have become increasingly desperate as they eye dwindling inventory and skyrocketing invoices.President Donald Trump seemed to back down somewhat last week when he said he expected the tariffs to come down “substantially.” That helped set off a rally in the stock market. But for small businesses that operate on razor-thin margins, the back and forth is causing massive upheaval. Some say they could be just months from going out of business altogether. The Massachusetts family-owned game company Game makers are particularly susceptible to the tariffs since the majority of games and toys sold in the U.S. are made in China, according to The Toy Association.WS Game Co., based in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts, is a family-owned business that licenses Hasbro board games like Monopoly, Candy Land and Scrabble and creates deluxe versions of them. Its most popular line of games come in boxes that look like vintage books and sell for $40.The company’s games were featured in Oprah’s Favorite Things list in 2024 and sold in 14,000 stores in North America, from big national chains to mom-and-pop stores, said owner Jonathan Silva, whose father founded the company in 2000.All of WS Game’s production is done in China. The tariffs have brought the past 25 years of healthy growth to a screeching halt.Over the past three weeks, WS Game has had three containers of finished games, worth $500,000, stranded in China. It lost orders from three of the largest U.S. retailers totaling $16 million in business. And there’s not much Silva can do about it. “As a small business, we don’t have the runway or the capabilities to move manufacturing on a whim,” said Silva, who has 22 employees. He said the tariffs have “disrupted our business and put us on the verge of insolvency” and estimates he has about a four-month runway to stay afloat if nothing changes.“We’re really hoping that cooler heads prevail,” he said. Artificial flowers in Kentucky Jeremy Rice co-owns House, a home-décor shop in Lexington, Kentucky, that specializes in artificial flower arrangements for the home. About 90% of the flowers his business uses are made in China.Rice uses dozens of vendors. The largest are absorbing some of the cost of the tariffs and passing on the rest. One vendor is raising prices by 20% and another 25%. But Rice is expecting smaller vendors to increase prices by much higher percentages.House offers mid-range artificial flowers. A large hydrangea head will retail for $10 to $16, for example. China is the only place that manufacturers higher quality silk flowers. It would take a vendor years to open a factory in a different country or move production somewhere else, Rice said.Rice ordered his holiday décor early this year. But even after stocking up ahead of the tariffs, he only has enough everyday floral inventory in to last two to three months.“After that, I don’t know what we’re going to do,” he said.Rice is concerned that the trade war will wipe out a bunch of mom-and-pop stores, similar to what happened in the Great Recession and the pandemic.“There’s nowhere to turn, there’s nothing to do,” he said. Tea in Michigan A tea shop in a Michigan college town is also caught in the middle of the ongoing tariff fight.“It’s basically just put a big pit in my stomach,” said Lisa McDonald, owner of TeaHaus, located in Ann Arbor, home to the University of Michigan. McDonald has owned TeaHaus for nearly 18 years and sells tea to customers across the U.S.Americans drank about 86 billion servings of tea in 2024, according to the Tea Association of the U.S.A.. Almost all of that is imported since tea isn’t grown in the U.S. at scale, due to factors ranging from climate to cost.McDonald imports loose-leaf tea from China, India, Kenya, Sri Lanka, and other countries. She says her customer base is “from all over the U.S. and the world.” But she worries there is a limit to what they’ll spend. Her premium teas can cost up to $33 for a 50-gram bag.“I don’t think I can charge $75 for a 50-gram bag of tea, no matter how amazing that tea is,” she said.McDonald understands Trump’s rationale for wanting to use tariffs to spur U.S. manufacturing but says it doesn’t apply to the tea industry.“We can’t grow tea in the U.S. to the extent that we need. We can’t just flip the industry and ‘make tea great again’ in America. It just can’t happen,” she said. Car accessories in Oklahoma Jim Umlauf’s business, 4Knines, based in Oklahoma City, makes vehicle seat covers and cargo liners for dog owners and others. To do so, he needs raw materials such as fabric, coatings and components from China.Umlauf has explored manufacturing in countries other than China since 2018, when Trump first instituted a 25% tariff on goods from China, but has run into complications. In the meantime, 4Knines absorbs the extra cost, which Umlauf says has limited its growth and squeezed its margins.Now, the new tariffs make it nearly impossible to do business. The demand is there, but the company can’t afford to bring over more products.“We only have a limited amount of inventory left, and without some relief, we’ll run out soon,” Umlauf said.As a small business owner who has worked hard to develop a high-quality brand, create jobs and contribute to the community, Umlauf is frustrated. He has tried to contact the White House and other decision-makers to ask for small business support. But he’s gotten zero response.“It’s time for policymakers to consider the full impact of trade policies not just on stock prices or global competitiveness, but on the real people running small businesses,” he said. AP videojournalist Mike Householder in Detroit contributed to this report. Mae Anderson, AP Business Writer
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E-Commerce
Its been more than half a century since it became more common to ship freight in trucks than by train. But when one company decided to start selling its product in the New York City market, it built its own new rail terminal to avoid the cost and emissions of trucking. A truck is not an efficient way to take these types of materials long distance, says Grant Quasha, CEO of Eco Material Technologies. The company makes supplementary cementitious material or SCM, a component added to concrete to make it stronger and longer-lasting. The material is made from fly ash, a type of waste produced from coal plants that the company sources from landfills at locations throughout the country. A truck can hold 20 tons of it; a train, which can move as much as 2,000 tons, cuts emissions by at least 90%, Quasha says. The company wanted to serve the construction market in New York from one of its sites in rural Pennsylvania, as well as another site in Georgia. But since trucking would be cost-prohibitive and more polluting, they turned to the more old-fashioned solution of rail. First, they had to find rail lines that were still in use in the right location. We had to scour the area to find existing infrastructure that could work with our needs, Quasha says. They partnered with a local short-line railroad that owned a rail yard in Queens, not far from the companys concrete customers. Then they built a terminal in the rail yard that would work for their specific needs. Extra train tracks at the terminal allow them to store their product in train cars until its needed. [Photo: New York & Atlantic Railway Co.] The logistics are complicated. To make a delivery from one of the companys sites, in Pennsylvania, the train cant go straight there. There isnt a bridge or tunnel to accommodate a train to Queens, although a long-planned freight tunnel is under construction. After a train reaches New Jersey, the train cars go on a specialized barge with built-in train tracks. A tugboat pushes the barge across the Hudson and East Rivers, and then another locomotive picks up the train cars in Brooklyn. Right now, using this type of material in New York City usually means importing it from countries like Turkey and China. But it makes more sense, environmentally, for it to come from a place like Pennsylvania instead, Quasha says. (It also can avoid tariffs and crowded ports.) Over the last century, coal companies have sent billions of tons of waste to landfills, which Eco Material Technologies reprocesses for use in concrete. It also has the dual benefit of helping clean up the old dumps. When it’s used in concrete, it reduces the need for cement, which has a large carbon footprint. It makes the final concrete stronger, and less expensive. “People say, if these materials are cheaper, more environmentally friendly, and make better concrete, why aren’t they used all the time?” Quasha says. “The answer is supply: Historically, there hasn’t been enough of the material where you need when you need it. You don’t generally have these waste dumps next to midtown Manhattan.” At the new terminal, where deliveries have already started, the company plans to bring in around 50,000 tons of the product each year, on roughly 10 train cars each week.
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E-Commerce
The rumors are true: Anheuser-Busch confirmed on Tuesday that its viral sensation Busch Light Apple will be back in stores in May for the first time since 2022. Thats welcome news to the legions of diehard fans who have been appealing the St. Louis-based beer maker to bring the apple-flavored lager back to stores for the past three years. “Before Busch Light Apple was taken off shelves, our fans chased down trucks to get their hands on it,” Krystyn Stowe, head of marketing at Busch Family & Natural Family at Anheuser-Busch, said in a statement to Fast Company. “They created Facebook groups with thousands of members to mourn the loss of their favorite beer, and Reddit threads became a new home for those looking to connect with others who miss the signature sweet taste of Busch Light Apple.” In recent weeks, people have taken to social media to share that theyve apparently found early-release cans of Busch Light Apple on shelves or videos of the beer on assembly lines. Such posts have typically sparked large numbers of comments from fans asking where the beer can be located. Its a bit tricky to unpeel what exactly kicked off the rumor mill this spring that “Babble”as fans call itmight be revived this year. However, in mid-March, a user on the X platform shared a photo that he said was from a December 2024 Anheuser-Busch meeting indicating a return of the fan-favorite beverage. That photo was subsequently shared widely across various social media platforms. To be fair, some fans were hoping it was a sign of good things to come as far back as October when Busch Beer celebrated National Apple Day with a photo of a bushel of the beer and apples on Instagram. One in every three comments on Busch Lights social posts is from fans urging us to bring back Busch Light Apple, and weve read every single one, Stowe added in a statement. But the good-news announcement comes some news that might disappoint: The company promises that Bapple will only be available while supplies last and urges fans to stock up. That said, Busch tells Fast Company that fans can expect to see the beer in stores “all summer long.” Busch league of fans All of this fervor might leave some of you scratching your heads in confusion: People are this passionate about . . . a Busch beverage? Oh, you have no idea. Something special seemingly happened when the Busch brand dropped its first flavored beer from the family tree in July 2020. Whether its the taste, the timing of the beverage launch, or the companys announcement that lampooned an Apple keynote presentation of new tech product launches, the beverage soon amassed a loyal Busch league of fans. How loyal? A lot of people toss around the word favorite when describing the lager thats made with real apple extract. And while theres seemingly a market for everything on eBay, some people have recently sold Bapple merchandise for $200 and up, while empty cans or even an empty box case could fetch $10. Apple tie-in This year, Anheuser-Busch has once again played up that Apple tie-in, enlisting a perhaps-unlikely spokesperson for the beverages rebirth: Ronald G.Wayne, who cofounded the tech giant alongside Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. Wayne, now 90, liquidated his 10% stake in Apple in 1976 for just $800 and hes parlaying a billion-dollar mistake that happened nearly 50 years ago as a selling point for fans to stock up on Busch Light Apple. This time, Im not missing out on a great, Apple-related opportunity, Wayne says in the YouTube ad before pointing to a pallet of Bapple and calling it a real good investment. When and where will Busch Light Apple beer be available? For fans who cant wait to get their hands on a cold can of Bapple, the Busch website has a locator feature to search for any brew, including Busch Light Apple, by zip code.
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E-Commerce
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