WLTX-TV
January 2, 2025
South Carolina small businesses brace for potential tariff impact under new administration
Small business owners say the increase in tariffs under a new presidential administration is concerning.
Author: Shelly Garzon
COLUMBIA, S.C. — With a new administration set to take office in less than three weeks, small businesses in South Carolina are expressing their concerns about how changes in policy might impact them.
“Small based businesses are really the heart and soul of each and every one of our communities here today,” Deborah Quinones, said.
Quinones, the owner of Heaven and Earth, a small business that sells homemade soaps, balms and self care products, says the potential increase in tariffs once president elect Donald Trump takes office is concerning.
“We want it to be economically sound for everyone around, but if tariffs are going up, prices are going up, our imported goods are, you know, going up. they’re skyrocketing,” Quinones said. “Ultimately, it can even push a small business like myself, who’s just starting, to maybe not launch as powerfully as we would want. It could take a longer time, or maybe not at all.”
Quinones says she worries the increase in tariffs will lead to the loss of customers.
“Prices going up means that ultimately, those expenses, those prices end up going on to the consumer, which now takes away, because now they’re going to be looking for less expensive products, which also can mean less quality of the product and that’s not what we want. We want to put out high quality product be able to assist people,” Quinones said.
Frank Knapp, the president of the South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce, says businesses are hopeful for 2025, but there are concerns.
“Small businesses in South Carolina employ almost half of all workers. They are, in fact, a central part of our economy here and across the country,” Knapp said.
Knapp says an increase in tariffs would negatively impact not only business owners but consumers as well.
“The problem with that is that small businesses operate, they’re so competitive and they operate on a small profit margin that they don’t always want to pass on exact increase of costs to the consumer, which then they have to figure out, ‘Okay, so how do I continue to make money without passing on all my costs to the consumer?'” Knapp said. “Well, they have to look at their personnel. Do they have to have some people now working part-time or less hours, maybe letting people go altogether, or maybe other benefits that they’re offering to their employees that they may have to cut back.”
Republican strategist Dave Wilson says this is part of the president’s plan to benefit the economy.
“I think President Trump is actually trying to do a ploy that gets other countries to actually look at the cost of goods themselves and make it so that American goods are going over there as well,” Wilson said. “It’s a tool that the president is using right now for economic policy.”
Another concern the chamber has is the plan of mass deportation President Elect Trump has discussed.
According to the American Immigration Council, in 2022, roughly 90% of undocumented immigrants were of working age compared to 61% of U.S. born population.
“They are working primarily in small businesses, in agriculture, in construction, in hotels and restaurants and lawn care, elder care. A good part of those people working in those businesses are undocumented,” Knapp said. “If we deport all of them, small businesses are going to have to cut back on their services, which means they cut back on how much revenue they have, or go out of business.”
Wilson says this is part of Trump’s focus to “put American workers back to work.”
“It could cost consumers, but businesses are also employing people who are not in the country under legal means, and so that is a place that they really have to look at and go, ‘How do we actually work on the American economy and put more Americans to work?'”