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The Trump administration in early April. Since then, small-business owners who depend on imports from China to survive are increasingly desperate as they eye dwindling inventory and skyrocketing invoices.

President Donald Trump 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.

Massachusetts family-owned game company

Game makers are particularly susceptible to the tariffs since 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 brought 25 years of healthy growth to a screeching halt.

Over the past three weeks, WS Game 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.

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 "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.

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%. Rice expects 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, Rice said.

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 Michigan also is caught in the middle of the tariff fight.

Lisa McDonald has owned TeaHaus in Ann Arbor 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 worries there is a limit to what her customers will 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.

She 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 just flip the industry and 'make tea great again' in America," she said. "It just can't happen."

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 explored manufacturing in countries other than China since 2018, when Trump first instituted a 25% tariff on goods from China, but ran into complications. In the meantime, 4Knines absorbs the extra cost, which Umlauf says 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 worked hard to develop a high-quality brand, create jobs and contribute to the community, Umlauf is frustrated. He tried to contact the White House and other decision-makers to ask for small-business support but got zero response.