Tariffs impact Texas retailer

For Texas small business owner, Tiffany Williams, tariffs on travel goods imported from China will be detrimental to her business.

6 years
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The threat of these tariffs and the impact that they'll have is a huge unknown.
I own The Luggage Shop of Lubbock, Texas. We are a third-generation family business that's been in Lubbock for 67 years.
Over 85% of what's in my store is imported directly from China. We probably have maybe 15% that comes from South America, and there's a little bit of domestic. But unfortunately, the travel goods industry is just one of those industries that's very dependent on imported goods from China.
Our manufacturers have already begun discussion on what they're going to do as far as price increases that we'll be seeing just as immediately when those tariffs go into effect.
The reality of trying to change production and capacity from the current supply chains that are already established in China, it will take years to change production to other countries or to the United States.
It just really is amazing to me to think about what the impact of that'll be on our business.
We've given the consumer, you know, a benefit with tax reform and giving them more disposable income to spend, but yet we're going to turn around and increase the cost of what they're purchasing.
It's hard to imagine that a consumer is going to be willing to pay 25% more for, you know, a suitcase that right now costs maybe $400, and it's going to cost $500. I just have a very hard time imagining the consumer is going to be very happy with that.
For a small business to not know what is ahead and how we can respond to that, and we certainly want to take care of our employees as much as possible, but I feel like this could be such a detrimental impact on our business that it will definitely affect those aspects as well.

这些关税的威胁以及它们将产生的影响是一个巨大的未知数。
我拥有德克萨斯州拉伯克市的“拉伯克箱包店”。我们是一个第三代家族企业,在拉伯克已经经营了67年。
我店里超过85%的商品都是直接从中国进口的。我们大概有15%的商品来自南美,还有一小部分是国内生产的。但不幸的是,旅行用品行业就是这样一个非常依赖从中国进口商品的行业。
我们的制造商已经开始讨论,一旦这些关税生效,他们将如何立即进行价格上调。
要想把生产和产能从中国已经建立起来的现有供应链中转移出去,现实是,将生产转移到其他国家或美国需要数年时间。
想到这会对我们的生意产生怎样的影响,我真的觉得不可思议。
我们通过税收改革给了消费者好处,给了他们更多的可支配收入去消费,但我们却反过来要提高他们所购买商品的价格。
很难想象消费者会愿意为一个现在可能卖400美元,以后要卖500美元的行李箱多付25%的钱。我实在很难想象消费者会对此感到高兴。
对于一个小企业来说,不知道未来会发生什么,不知道我们该如何应对,我们当然想尽可能地照顾好我们的员工,但我觉得这对我们的生意可能会造成毁灭性的打击,也必将影响到那些方面。

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