{"id":487050,"date":"2026-02-24T05:50:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T05:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/487050\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T05:50:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T05:50:12","slug":"vt-business-blames-trump-tariffs-for-first-layoffs-in-nearly-50-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/487050\/","title":{"rendered":"Vt. business blames Trump tariffs for first layoffs in nearly 50 years"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) &#8211; For the first time in nearly 50 years a Westford small business is dealing with layoffs, and they say President Trump\u2019s tariffs are to blame.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Vermont Sen. Peter Welch joined <a href=\"https:\/\/www.roversnorth.com\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.roversnorth.com\/\">Rovers North<\/a> on Monday to applaud the Supreme Court ruling last week that struck down those tariffs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Rovers North sells Land Rover parts. The business says the extra costs of tariffs drove its sales down 30% and forced layoffs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cIt\u2019s extremely difficult, you can\u2019t run a business, you can\u2019t plan when you don\u2019t know what the tariff rates will be. Oftentimes, it comes down to the customs agent who\u2019s doing the actual declaration. So, there\u2019s an incredible amount of inconsistency and even the government websites won\u2019t tell you what the actual tariff amount will be,\u201d said Calef Letorney of Rovers North.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Welch called the tariffs reckless and an abuse of power that hurt Vermont businesses and consumers. He said the ruling reinforces that Congress is the only branch with constitutional authority to regulate tariffs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cIt is a restoration partially of the rule of law, where the president overreaches and does something that the constitution prohibits him from doing, and the Supreme Court pushed him back,\u201d said Welch, D-Vermont.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Over the weekend, President Trump said he would raise global tariffs to 15%. The law Trump is relying on for that requires Congress to approve the duties within 150 days for them to remain in effect.<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2026 WCAX. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) &#8211; For the first time in nearly 50 years a Westford small business is dealing&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487051,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,2858,2302,101,3,5188,66708,111,86655,192802,144484,759,3479,27076,34752,172913,223838],"class_list":{"0":"post-487050","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-court","10":"tag-courts","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-north","14":"tag-peter","15":"tag-politics","16":"tag-rover","17":"tag-sen","18":"tag-supreme","19":"tag-tariffs","20":"tag-trump","21":"tag-vermont","22":"tag-wcax","23":"tag-welch","24":"tag-westford"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}