plunged by an estimated 5,000<\/a> last spring.<\/p>\nExhausted by months of chaos, many are viewing the prospect of clawing some of that money back with a mixture of wariness and hope.<\/p>\n
Yun Hai has \u201cbarely squeaked by,\u201d even while enjoying one of its strongest periods of sales, according to Lisa Cheng Smith, who founded the company in 2018. Despite the prospect of a refund, a sour taste remains.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou cannot reverse the damage,\u201d Ms. Smith said. \u201cAnd there was so much damage.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was a little more than a year ago that Mr. Trump, on what he called Liberation Day, announced an aggressive package of global tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Along with a sweeping 10 percent duty on international imports, he announced country-specific tariffs ranging between 11 and 50 percent. Despite his claims to the contrary, these costs would be largely absorbed by American businesses.<\/p>\n
To Ms. Smith\u2019s shock, the new tax on Taiwan was 32 percent \u2014 an existential crisis for Yun Hai, which exclusively stocks Taiwanese imports, like cold-pressed oils, naturally fermented soy sauces and rice cookers.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow are we going to survive?\u201d she recalled thinking.<\/p>\n
That eye-popping rate, to her relief, was quickly reduced. But the tariff would still hover mercurially between 10 and 20 percent over the year, adding tens of thousands of dollars in unexpected costs \u2014 and incalculable anxiety.<\/p>\n
Ms. Smith and her co-owner, Lillian Lin, have scrambled to make things work. Cutting any of their five employees was never an option in their minds. Nor could they simply seek out domestic suppliers; highlighting Taiwanese products was the company\u2019s raison d\u2019\u00eatre.<\/p>\n
So they did whatever else they could. Right away, they stopped paying for advertising and moved product photography and other production tasks in-house. Any new hires would have to wait. Reluctantly, they raised their prices by 10 to 15 percent. Packages of dried fruit \u2014 their most popular item, available in mulberry, wax apple, pearl guava and so on \u2014 increased from $10 to $11.<\/p>\n
Ms. Smith said she used her own savings to cover one unexpectedly high tariff payment. If they could not pay the duties when their goods arrived, they would have to pay additional fees to store the goods until they could. After eight years of establishing a successful formula, keeping the business afloat now involved disconcertingly more guesswork.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re almost ordering blindly, without knowing what the charges will be when the shipment arrives,\u201d Ms. Lin said.<\/p>\n
And still they felt lucky.<\/p>\n
In its brief history, Yun Hai was fortunate to have built a loyal customer base, and the announcement of the tariffs seemed to galvanize customers. Online orders skyrocketed in a collective show of support. The store \u2014 in a hip area of East Williamsburg that Ms. Cheng jokingly refers to as the \u201cWin Son Autonomous Zone,\u201d in reference to the acclaimed Taiwanese restaurant nearby \u2014 was packed with customers that first month.<\/p>\n
Now, suddenly, there arrived some potential for relief. The Supreme Court on Feb. 20 ruled that the president\u2019s tariffs were illegal. In response, the Trump administration quickly invoked a different law to impose a new 10 percent global tariff.<\/p>\n
Amid confusion over what would happen next, U.S. Customs and Border Protection opened its refund portal on April 20. It was a pleasant surprise for the Yun Hai staff. Yet it became clear that recovering funds would be no simple task.<\/p>\n
The process felt byzantine. One of Ms. Smith\u2019s friends \u2014 the owner of Le Puzz, a jigsaw-puzzle manufacturer in New York \u2014 texted her a screenshot of an acronym-laden block of text from the website alongside a similarly inscrutable passage from \u201cInfinite Jest,\u201d the notoriously dense postmodern tome.<\/p>\n
Not feeling fully confident in the protocol, Ms. Lin nonetheless gathered the necessary documents and submitted an application a few days later.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not yet counting on getting our money back, but it would be foolish not to try,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Such ambivalence is not unique among local small businesses. Vlad Dragusin, the founder of Candylab Toys, which produces wooden cars and play sets, said his company had not yet engaged with the portal. The tariffs last year had caused major disruptions to his company\u2019s holiday season inventory, and he is still dealing with the repercussions. He could use the refund. He simply does not have the bandwidth to figure it out.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not something that seems easy to pursue,\u201d Mr. Dragusin said.<\/p>\n
Many other companies are simply not eligible for relief.<\/p>\n
Christopher Taylor, the owner of Li-Lac Chocolates, a New York candy brand founded in 1923, said his packaging costs soared because of the tariffs. The materials are imported, but because Li-Lac buys from domestic suppliers \u2014 who paid tariffs and raised their prices \u2014 it is not eligible for refunds.<\/p>\n
And Mr. Taylor and others expressed doubt that any company receiving refunds would restore pre-tariff pricing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not quite as simple as lowering prices again,\u201d Ms. Smith said. \u201cThe whole ecosystem has changed.\u201d<\/p>\n
And so business owners have been left in a different sort of limbo. Refund applications could take up to 90 days to process. Meanwhile, businesses continue to pay Mr. Trump\u2019s new 10 percent emergency tariffs, which are already facing challenges in court.<\/p>\n
It is no surprise, then, that after an anxious year, no one at Yun Hai is celebrating yet.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat if Trump suddenly decrees something else?\u201d Ms. Lin said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After the Supreme Court recently invalidated a sweeping slate of global tariffs President Trump issued last year, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":220169,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[18041,5008,24873,1452,9,11,10,49,51,50,86693,2990,1069,1876],"class_list":["post-220168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-brooklyn-nyc","tag-customs-tariff","tag-customs-and-border-protection-us","tag-donald-j","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-rebates-and-refunds","tag-small-business","tag-trump","tag-united-states-politics-and-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}