Government & Politics

A Small Business Roundtable On Tariffs Paints An Unnerving Portrait Of A Trade Policy Gone Awry

Published 1 week ago1w ago • Bookmarks: 100

February 28, 2026

By Barrett Seaman–

Former Westchester County Executive George Latimer went to Washington a year ago to represent voters in the 16^th Congressional District, concentrated in south and central Westchester, including most of the rivertowns. As a time-tested retail politician who makes constituent services a priority, he has returned often to the district, making the rounds of village governments and sponsoring fact-finding events.

One such event, a roundtable discussion of the impact of tariffs on small businesses, took place on February 27 at the Westchester County Center. A seven-member panel of experts and small business owners spoke to not only the financial fallout from Trump’s roller coaster policies that use tariffs as an international negotiating tool but also the personal, community and international repercussions that have followed.

Support our Sponsors

Jane Veron, co-founder and CEO , of The Acceleration Project, a nonprofit that supports small businesses, reported that a survey her organization took found that 70% of respondents were already feeling the pain of the tariffs while another 20% said they expected to in the next couple of months. Asked to describe their feelings about tariffs, “they offered words like “terrified, unsure, confused, nervous, angry, mystified, devastated.” But the word that stood out,” said Veron, “was ‘uncertain,’”

“It feels like we’re on the front line, said Peter Herrero Jr. later in the program. Herrero is CEO of The Hospitality Group, which operates four restaurant and catering establishments out of White Plains. “I don’t think people realize what’s going on,” he said. It’s the tariffs but also their compounding effect on employment, continuity and planning under a degree of uncertainty that will take months if not years to untangle.

Ellen Sledge, who founded and expanded Penny Lick, a chain of ice cream stores and a catering business out of Hastings-on-Hudson, doesn’t have to wait to feel the pain. “In November 2024,” she testified, “I’m buying 11 pounds of 58% dark chocolate at a cost of $90.” By May of 2025, that same chunk of chocolate cost her $220. “How much can I charge for that ice cream cone?” she pondered, Calculating the cost of tariffs is a challenge. All her receipts show to the penny how much her costs are rising, she says, “but never on my receipts does it say what the tariff is.”

“By several accounts,’ said panel member Raymond Brescia, Associate Dean of the Albany Law School, “there’s $175 billion [in tariffs] that has been collected illegally. …You would think that the businesses and taxpayers could get that money back,” he added. But there is no clear mechanism for doing so.

“If you’re designated as an importer of record, you paid the tariffs; you have to have records of that,” Brescia explained. Each business would have to file challenges—at this point, it appears, through the court of international trade. The whole process, no doubt delayed by lengthy court cases, would likely take five years,” he estimated.

“I have absolutely no hope of getting my money back,” replied Penny Lick’s Ellen Sledge. “If tied up for years, my answer to that is that most small businesses don’t have years.”

That prognostication was echoed by Jessica Galen, whose Bloomy cheese shop in Dobbs Ferry specializes in limited quantities of specialized artisanal cheeses. Her business is built on close relations with small providers who can’t afford to lose the sales. Barring relief from Trump’s tariffs, she predicted, those providers “will drop out—and they’re not coming back.”

Any kind of comprehensive solution is not likely to come out of Washington, as the Republicans controlling Congress seem unwilling to intervene with Trump’s apparent commitment to a tariff-based trade policy. For their part, Democrats can do little more than warn from the sidelines. In December, Latimer, a member of the House Small Business committee, joined with 20 House colleagues in writing a letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Homeland Security Secretary Krisi Noem advising them to be prepared for an onslaught of legal appeals from business owners who want their money back.

George Latimer opened the event with a sharp critique of Washington’s politicians

Clearly unhappy with the federal government’s dysfunction, Latimer is not shy about casting blame. “What I’ve seen in Washington that disturbs me,” the Congressman said at the beginning of the event, “and I’ve seen this on both sides of the aisle, is an emphasis on performance art, rather than on performance.” Performance, he went on, “is how you manage the budget, how you allocate resources and how you implement ideas operationally to achieve an end.”

Performance art, by inference, is likely to be what the nation is seeing as Washington’s response to a trade embroglio gone badly awry. As Peter Herrero warned, “You think this is bad? Wait four to five months.”

Read or leave a comment on this story...

Support our Sponsors