I'm John Batchel with my colleague, Gene Marks, who's back from the road trips these last

weeks in listening to America, talk about China, talk about taxes, talk about regulation.

But now we have a new name, tariffs spelled with two Fs.

What does it mean for small businesses, Gene?

Well, in our last segment, I did talk to you about those kitchen cabinet manufacturers.

You know, a lot of them were small and mid-sized businesses, and they're excited to have tariffs so that they can compete with low-cost imports that are coming in.

So in some cases, businesses themselves will have that advantage because they can be put on a more

level playing field. Remember, that turns into retaining jobs. I mean, again, say you're a

cabinet manufacturer and you can't compete against China and what do you do? You have to cut

back and, you know, people can lose employment. So that's the big political reason behind why,

you know, Trump is so much behind tariffs. Tariffs itself, you know, also they protect industries.

They help small businesses maybe that are in e-commerce, where they buy goods from overseas and

resell them. But those goods themselves, you goods themselves might come at a different price.

But the biggest issue with tariffs that people are very much concerned about is inflation.

If, you know, it's a cost.

So if companies are going to continue to import goods for their materials and then resell them,

and those come at a 60% higher cost because

that's the tariff rate that Trump is proposing on China. Well, the company's going to have to make

profit somehow. They're going to pass that down to their customers and you and I are going to

wind up, you know, paying more for the products that we get. So that that is itself an issue.

But, you know, the people that support higher tariffs are saying, well, it's going to force American businesses to rely more on American products and to buy American products. And, you know, they won't necessarily have to buy those cheap Chinese goods anymore because they're not necessarily,

they're not as cheap with all the tariffs. So they got to keep it in-house. But again, if that's the case, businesses will be paying more and that's going to definitely raise, you know,

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