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A trade war with China and tariff threats on other countries are ramping up pressure on stores that sell products from overseas — which, for some categories, is just about all of them.
April 12, 2025, 5:03 a.m. ET
Vivian Hoffman has worked in retail for a half-century, including 25 years as a buyer for Century 21 and the last eight running Whim, a chain selling affordable women’s clothing in the suburbs of New York City. She has adapted to recessions, the turmoil after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and the Covid-19 pandemic.
But the last few weeks have presented a set of challenges that are confounding even for an industry veteran.
The bulk of the clothing and accessories that Ms. Hoffman sells are produced in China, facing import duties of 145 percent for now, and Vietnam, which could face high tariffs in a few months. While her vendors pay the tariffs, one of them recently raised shoe prices 20 percent while others say they will soon increase theirs to offset higher costs. A vendor that sells Chinese-made jeans could not even figure out what prices to put on items in its fall line.
The upheaval on top of wavering consumer demand has left Ms. Hoffman in a bind.
“I was going back and forth: Do I buy less because I think business is going to be hurt or do I try to buy extra merchandise because I’m afraid of an increase in prices?” she said. “I’ve been going back and forth between two extremes.”
With five stores and a small online presence, Whim is just a speck in the vast retail universe. But the thorny decisions that Ms. Hoffman faces are a microcosm of the whiplash that retailers across the United States are confronting. All businesses crave clarity, yet the wide-ranging tariffs imposed, threatened and pulled back by the White House are making it difficult for companies of all sizes and shapes to plan ahead.
Big-box retailers like Walmart and Target and giant e-commerce operators like Amazon have the power to demand concessions from their suppliers overseas. Andy Jassy, Amazon’s chief executive, said in an interview on CNBC on Thursday that the company had accelerated bringing some inventory to the United States ahead of the tariffs and would try to “renegotiate terms” with some suppliers.
