Small businesses make up the backbone of Vermont’s economy — and its reputation for artisanal products and craftsmanship. But most are also participants in a global economy that has been quaking from the tectonic shifts caused by President Donald Trump’s tariff regimen.
These smaller enterprises lack the resources to absorb increased costs and the scale needed to negotiate with suppliers, making them particularly susceptible to financial upheaval from tariffs.
One has taken on Trump’s tariffs directly. Terry Precision Cycling, a Burlington-based maker of women’s cycling apparel, was one of five American companies to challenge the legal basis for Trump’s tariffs in court. Terry and its coplaintiffs have won twice, most recently on August 29, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held in a 7-4 ruling that Congress, not the president, has the power to authorize most of the tariffs that Trump imposed on April 2. Trump has appealed the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court, adding even more uncertainty to what has already been a hectic year for Vermont businesses.
While the legal question is pending, companies have been strategizing in order to survive. Here’s how four — three small businesses and one iconic one — have responded so far.
Bivo
Water bottle startup, Richmond
Carina Hamel has been thinking about Europe a lot lately. If the trade war between the U.S. and China continues for much longer, the future of her Richmond startup company could depend on the market across the pond.
Hamel and her husband, Robby Ringer, run Bivo, which sells specialty stainless-steel water bottles for cyclists and others who need a chuggable vessel but want an alternative to plastic. With a slick design and polished marketing, Bivo has found a niche across its five-year history. But Bivo bottles are manufactured in China, and there is no cost-effective way to make them in the U.S. So Hamel and Ringer have been racing to contend with the potentially crippling cost of tariffs.
Depending on the constantly shifting state of diplomacy, the trade war has increased Bivo’s manufacturing costs anywhere from 25 to 145 percent. Right now, the import tax is on the low end, adding a couple of dollars to the roughly $8-per-bottle cost that Bivo pays a Chinese factory.
While Bivo can reimburse its manufacturer over time, it must pay import duties upon shipment. Tariff bills in the tens of thousands of dollars can create a major cash-flow problem for small businesses such as Bivo, which has just eight employees, threatening to grind its market momentum to a halt.
Hence Europe. Since the spring, Hamel has sought ways to store and sell Bivo bottles overseas in order to avoid the steep U.S. tariffs altogether. She’s increased the number of retail partners in Europe from 30 to 75, including the largest online merchant in Germany. Bivo has also secured warehouse space in the Netherlands, where finished bottles will be shipped directly from China, sans U.S. tariffs.
It’s a difficult change in strategy for the startup. Europe has a large cycling market, but until this year, Bivo had focused primarily on American consumers because the company lacked the capital needed to drum up business on a second continent, Hamel said.
“Since April, we’ve shifted that mindset,” she said.
The New York Times profiled Bivo’s pivot to Europe in a story about tariffs in May. As summer turns to fall, Bivo’s European business is still getting off the ground. The company is “just about” to ship its first bottles from the Chinese factory to the new Netherlands warehouse, Hamel said. Bivo’s direct-to-European consumer website is due to launch next month. Hamel traveled to Frankfurt in June to make connections at the Eurobike convention, which yielded a distribution contract in the United Kingdom.
“We’re making positive inroads,” Hamel said.
Meanwhile, Bivo is earning thinner margins on its U.S. sales. Hamel and Ringer have chosen not to increase prices, which, at $39 to $49 per bottle, are already more expensive than those made by the company’s only direct competitor, CamelBak.
That may need to change if the trade war drags on. Tariffs on imports from China are set to jump back to 145 percent in November unless Trump and China make a deal.
“The biggest thing for us has been the inconsistencies and the inability to really plan,” Hamel said.
Pinnacle Parcels
Shipping services, Richford
When Trump imposed tariffs on Canada in the spring, the country responded by slapping retaliatory levies on a broad array of American goods. At Pinnacle Parcels, a shipping office in Richford, business dropped by 75 percent overnight.
Pinnacle Parcels functions as a kind of PO box for Canadian consumers. It allows them to order American products and, for a few bucks, have them shipped to Pinnacle Parcels, where owner Ricky Hoy stores the goods until his clients drive across the border to retrieve them. The arrangement allows Canadian consumers to take advantage of cheaper prices for certain products, such as car parts, or to buy things that otherwise aren’t available locally.
“All of my business is international with Canada,” Hoy said.
The company, which Hoy purchased in 2019, had already been pummeled in recent years. Cross-border travel was halted during the pandemic and was slow to recover. The flagging Canadian dollar meant customers who used Hoy’s service were saving less than they had before. Then Trump came to power and used inflammatory language about Canada that inspired many of its residents to boycott U.S. businesses.
“All of my business is international with Canada.”
Ricky Hoy
Tariffs delivered something close to a knockout blow. Canada’s retaliatory import duties meant its residents who picked up their goods at Pinnacle would have to pay tariffs at the border on their way home. The Canadian counter-tariffs were even more sweeping than those Trump had imposed.
“It just doesn’t make sense” for Canadian residents to buy in the U.S. now, Hoy said last month.
Business has increased somewhat from its nadir in April, Hoy said, but he anticipates his annual revenue will be down 45 percent. Hoy, who runs the business with the help of one part-time employee, has increased his fees to offset his losses. He took his first paycheck of the year in June.
If the trade war with Canada “lasts our president’s full term, I may go out of business,” Hoy said.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced in late August that he was dropping most of the retaliatory tariffs to match the broad exemptions included in the U.S. duties. In theory, the change should lead to more business for Pinnacle Parcels. But the U.S. and Canada have yet to reach a formal trade agreement. Negotiations are ongoing.
Vermont Country Store
Mail, web and brick-and-mortar retailer, Manchester
The Vermont Country Store’s fall catalog landed in mailboxes last week, showcasing a panoply of pastoral goods to living rooms across the country. But the expansive offering — what a Washington Post fashion critic recently dubbed “the Madison Avenue of plaid curtains and gingham napkins” — does not reflect the full effect of global tariffs.
“This is the lull before the storm,” CEO Jim Hall said.
The nearly 80-year-old company, headquartered in Manchester with retail stores in Weston and Rockingham, is an emporium of creature comforts from across the globe. The Vermont Country Store sells Irish wool sweaters, Belgian chocolates, Portuguese flannel and artificial Christmas trees from China.
Hall, who stepped back to a reduced role this week as part of a planned retirement, spent much of his last year at the helm of the family-owned company trying to navigate fast-changing trade policies that touched nearly every page of its catalog.
A larger company with national reach, Vermont Country Store was able to stockpile some imported products before Trump enacted his most sweeping tariffs. Once the tariffs kicked in, the company asked suppliers to hold onto inventory for a while, expecting the duties would drop.
“When he knocked the tariffs down to 10 percent, we thought that was a pretty good deal — it was only going to get worse from there,” Hall said.
So the fall catalog includes a mix of products for which the company paid low or no tariffs. That has allowed the Vermont Country Store, like other larger retailers, to avoid raising prices across the board.
Instead, the company is playing a game of chicken with its many national competitors.
“You don’t want to be the first one to say, ‘I’m going to add 10 bucks to the cost of this thing because of the tariffs,’” Hall said. “Because we have un-tariffed inventory that is mixed with the tariff inventory, we have the ability to do this gradually.”
Hall expects consumers will begin to feel the full effects of Trump’s trade policy in the last few months of 2025 and the beginning of 2026, once the stockpiling and wait-and-see strategies have played out.
The outgoing CEO, who also serves as chair of the American Commerce Marketing Association, said he agrees that tariffs can be a useful way to encourage domestic production of vital equipment. But the Vermont Country Store’s products include seasonal décor, for which local manufacturing is not a matter of national security.
“Do they realize this is a tax on Christmas?” Hall said.
Wee Seedling
Children’s apparel distributor, Jericho
To make extra money, Danielle Botto, a 30-year-old single mother and professional nanny, works as the U.S. distributor for a children’s wool apparel producer based in Finland. It’s a gig she hustled to get; Botto contacted the firm, ManyMonths, in 2021 and pitched them on the idea of expanding to the U.S.
She’s grown her sales by an average of 40 percent each year, distributing to mom-and-pop shops and selling a small portion of ManyMonths clothes through her own website, Wee Seedling.
This year, Botto will be lucky if she earns a dime.
The clothes she distributes are sewn at a “Scandinavian-owned” factory in China that pays premium wages and benefits and offers reasonable work hours. Everything is made to order, which means Botto must work with her retail partners each winter to secure the next season’s merchandise.
Botto ordered roughly $30,000 worth of ManyMonths leggings, cardigans, leg warmers and other performance wool products before tariffs took effect. By the time the factory in China was ready to ship, Botto faced an additional 37 percent import tax.
The tariff wiped out her anticipated $8,000 profit margin — plus several thousand dollars more.
Botto has decided to take the hit herself in hopes that tariffs will be a passing policy fever. ManyMonths clothes, which are designed to last through several years of a child’s growth, already sell at the very high end of what most American consumers will pay. She also doesn’t want to risk her relationships with the small retailers who stock her products by trying to pass on the after-the-fact costs to them.
If tariffs on China decreased to 10 or even 15 percent by the time she places next season’s order, Botto thinks she can make it work, perhaps by raising prices. Anything higher, she said, “would make our product kind of unreachable for the United States market, for the people who would buy what this is.”
The original print version of this article was headlined “Big Problem for Small Businesses | Tariffs are threatening some of the companies that call Vermont home. Here’s how four are trying to survive.”
This article appears in Sept 10-16, 2025.
