Tariffs: Small Business Impacts
- Chad Sowash
- 4 minutes ago
- 25 min read
What do you get when you mix a Shark Tank alum, a silicone baby mat, and a $230K tariff bill? A broken supply chain, that's what.
In this dollars-and-sense edition of The Chad & Cheese Podcast, Beth Benike—CEO of Busy Baby—joins the boys to explain how a product designed to keep sippy cups off the floor is now caught in a global trade war. From American factories ghosting her, to Chinese partners defending her IP with literal raids, Beth's entrepreneurial journey is part "How I Built This" and part "Game of Thrones."
We talk:
💸 Tariffs that double product costs overnight
🍼 Baby shower gifts priced like luxury handbags
🚫 Walmart contracts vs. reality
🇺🇸 The myth of "Made in America" for small businesses
🤯 And why your kid’s Christmas might look more 1970 than 2025
No politics. Just cold, hard manufacturing math—and one mother’s mission to keep America from running out of bibs. 🎄
📦 Tune in before the shelves go empty.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION
Joel (00:31.086)
What's up boys and girls, this is the Chad and cheese podcast. I'm your co host Joel Cheesman join as always, writing in the shotgun position is Chad. So wash as we welcome Beth Benike, CEO of a little business called Busy Baby, to the podcast. Beth, welcome to HR is most dangerous podcast.
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (00:51.27)
Welcome. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Chad (00:54.388)
She's been on Shark Tank. She's been on Guy Razz's How I Built This. I mean, this is, she's used to this.
Joel (00:54.828)
The pleasure and honor is all ours.
Joel (01:03.63)
CNN, yeah, it's all pregame. It's all pregame to the Super Bowl, which is our show, Beth. So everything you've done before this is just getting you prepared for this show. aside from the media properties that you've been on recently, a lot of our listeners will not know who you are. Give us the elevator pitch on you and what Busy Baby is.
Chad (01:10.112)
chat and she's podcasting.
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (01:28.577)
Yeah, I'm Beth. I am a mom who was in the army, had a kid when I turned 40, and came up with an idea for a baby product and took that product to market, got to go on Shark Tank with it, finally found some success about seven years in now and had my legs cut out from under me this week when tariffs were announced. That sums it up, I think, pretty quick.
Joel (01:51.118)
What is the product?
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (01:53.901)
So the Busy Baby Mat is the original product I came out with and it's just a very simple concept. It's a silicone place mat that serves as a clean place for baby's food. It's suctioned down to your high chair, your restaurant table, and then it has a tether system that allows you to hook up baby's toys. Since the invention of that first product, my brother and I, my brother quit his job joining the business. We've expanded to eight products that are all interchangeable, all designed to keep things within reach off the ground at home and on the go.
Chad (02:21.75)
Nice.
Joel (02:22.37)
chance I've been a customer at some point, or maybe one of my wives has been a customer at one.
Chad (02:28.566)
Yeah, you would have been a good husband if you would have bought one for yourself. So you didn't have to pick that stuff up when you were at the restaurant. Yes. Horrible husband. So we don't want to talk about politics this podcast. We want to talk about dollars and cents. And everybody's talking about how we want to be able to help entrepreneurs, small business people like yourself, to be able to thrive. Right? And so we want to be able to dig into the dollars and cents. You talk about
Joel (02:33.816)
Horrible husband, Horrible husband. Decent podcaster, though.
Chad (02:56.692)
This being a Silicon Place mat. So the first order of business for me is why did you choose to be able to start manufacturing in China? Why, what were the decisions behind that? Cause obviously there has to be a lot of research. have to take a look at cost margins, all those things, all the business things that you have to do when you're starting a business. So help us understand, get into your head when you were in those early, early decision-making process and research.
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (03:24.685)
You know, honestly, it wasn't a choice. There was no choice. I looked in America as a 10-year army veteran. I wanted nothing more than my products and everything about my business to be made America. And I actually further wanted it made in Minnesota. I worked with a factory here for 18 months. They tried to develop their own material because at that time, the biggest and first problem was the raw material was cost prohibitive because it's imported. It does not exist in the US. So that's the first problem. The material.
Chad (03:27.413)
Really?
Chad (03:52.575)
Wow.
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (03:53.271)
does not exist here. Silicone is made from silica, which is a very fancy pure sand, and it's actually very plentiful in the US. We just don't mine it. It's not usable. It's under the ground. So that's number one. Number two is factories in the US have to run very large volumes because obviously it's more expensive to manufacture here. They have to buy material in massive quantities to get price discounts.
Chad (04:06.912)
Mm-hmm.
Chad (04:21.79)
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (04:22.153)
And so they can't do an opening order of a couple thousand units for a company. It just doesn't make sense for them, for their business model. And I get that. Exactly. But at the same time as a startup, a mom of an infant working a full time job, I couldn't commit to the two million dollar minimum, which I just was offered this week, to work with a factory because now, you know, things are happening.
Chad (04:30.987)
scale.
Chad (04:43.627)
What?
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (04:47.851)
back to looking at US manufacturing. I talked to, we have requirements as well. Because we're making products that are made for babies, that has to be done in a clean environment. Most silicone factories are making O-rings and like parts for cars. They're not, it's not clean sterile environment. We need to have that clean environment. We also have a special kind of manufacturing. It's not injection, it's a press. It's a different type of machine. It's not common in manufacturing in the US. So when we do find someone who can do it, that's the...
Joel (04:48.078)
Mm-hmm.
Chad (04:56.533)
Yes.
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (05:16.637)
a challenge in itself and then to have that conversation with them like this week because I've gotten so much media, they're reaching out to me saying, hey, we can do what you're talking about. And as we furthered the conversation, they said, well, our minimum contract is $2 million a year. In the six years I've been making this stuff, I've never made a total of $2 million worth of product. So there's no way I could commit to a one-year contract of $2 million. It makes sense for them that that's what they have to do. I'm not mad at
Joel (05:18.412)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (05:38.008)
though.
Yeah.
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (05:46.069)
added, it's just not a feasible option for me.
Joel (05:49.166)
And currently right now you have $30,000 of product in China. And what would it take to get it here? What are you going to do with it? Like what? Where do we go from here?
Chad (05:49.302)
Yeah,
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (05:55.201)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (06:02.539)
have $158,000 of product in China. The $30,000 that I think you might be thinking of is what we budgeted for a reasonable tariff. So we did not have any tariffs prior to this administration. We knew what they were coming, so we budgeted. A reasonable tariff is 20 to 30%. So that would have, you know, we were at 20%. I think that's around $30,000. So we were budgeting for that. Our tariff right now is almost $230,000.
Chad (06:06.655)
Wow.
Chad (06:16.907)
Mm-hmm.
Chad (06:26.24)
Mm-hmm.
Chad (06:31.358)
And the product cost what?
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (06:32.908)
158.
Chad (06:35.286)
Ooh, so, okay, a couple of things. First and foremost, that is ridiculous. Second, what would you have to price those products at when they would actually get here in the U.S. if you did have the money, right? If you did have the financing, what would you have to price them at compared to where they're priced at now?
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (06:58.317)
I mean, it more than doubles our cost. So the rule of thumb when you have a CPG product that you want to take to market is you need to be able to sell that product for four times what it costs you to make it. Because you have all these other expenses like payroll for the people who help you run your company, insurance. I pay $50,000 a year in general product liability insurance because I have a product for babies and that's a requirement.
Chad (07:11.52)
Okay.
Joel (07:16.174)
Mm-hmm.
Chad (07:24.598)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (07:26.637)
marketing to let people know your products exist. I'm sure most of the people on your show have never heard of me or Busy Baby, have no idea what it is because it's very expensive to market your products and let people know they exist. There's a lot of other costs. So when you're doing the basic math, if you have an idea for a product and you're like, hmm, wonder if I could have a business out of this, you find out what it takes to make it and you multiply that times four. And if you can't sell it for that much, at least it's not going to be a profitable business, right?
So my product cost now would be closer to $15, maybe just a little under $15. So the product that is normally 30 is going to go up to just under 60.
Chad (08:05.738)
Mm-hmm.
Chad (08:11.606)
Wow. And we're talking about, for the most part, and you have to understand the consumer that you're actually selling to. For the most part, these are first time, you know, and they're young and they don't have a lot of money and they got to pay for a lot of other stuff. So this, to me, this is like a luxury item to some extent. And if they're buying it for, you 30, they might be able to swing that, but to
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (08:23.84)
New parents,
Chad (08:39.178)
to be able to take a look at how prices are actually going up and especially I would assume on the infant side and then being able to take a look at this as a luxury item that to me seems like a marketing issue as well.
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (08:53.433)
I mean, it's just an impossibility right now. There's so many new expenses that come with having a baby. Diapers, formula, cages to put them in, all the things.
Chad (09:00.736)
Yeah.
Joel (09:03.255)
we know. We know, Beth. We know. Many times over.
Chad (09:06.12)
Ha ha!
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (09:08.596)
So my products typically are at a price range of $10 to $30. They're very accessible and they provide a lot of value. Not only are they convenient to have and they keep babies busy so you can do other things like maybe eat your own food while it's still warm, but they're developmentally beneficial as well. We have occupational therapists using our products in their therapies with kids and teaching babies to learn how to self-feed. They're very useful. And they're at a price...
a very reachable price point. Like if you think about giving a baby shower gift, maybe it's not the new parents. Maybe you have a friend having a baby and you have to get a baby shower gift. That $30 to $50 price range is the most common price range people are willing to spend on their baby shower. Now, if I take that one item and double it, I'm now out of baby shower gift range for the people who don't have that new baby expense. I'm definitely out of the range for people with the new babies.
Chad (09:49.653)
Mm.
Joel (10:01.144)
Do you sell into like Walmart, Target, or is it all online? Like I can get your products everywhere. do you think happens at Walmart when everything doubles in price one day? Like I have a hard time wrapping my head around because people still need to buy stuff. don't think that, I don't think people understand the gravity of what's coming. Put it in your own words because you live this. What should we be expecting from in the retail market in America and you know, coming in?
four to six months.
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (10:32.395)
Yeah, I mean, probably empty shelves if nothing changes. I, as of this morning, Tuesday morning, I know Walmart is going to talk to the president today because there's probably hundreds of other suppliers like me who reached out to my buyer and said, I'm sorry, I can no longer supply you with my products once I run out of what I have in my warehouse because it's just not possible. We are locked into pricing with Target. We are locked into pricing with Walmart. So just because my costs go up,
doesn't mean anything. I still have to provide them, I'm contractually obliged to provide them with the product at the price we agreed to, which did have that 20 % tariff built in, not 145%. So now Walmart's probably heard from enough of people like me that we can't continue to sell you this stuff at this price that they have to go talk to the president themselves.
Joel (11:23.96)
So that's great to know. It's less about double pricing than no product at all, because you guys are in contract to price these things at what Walmart agreed to. It's going to look like post-USSR Russia looking for food and goods. That's scary.
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (11:28.236)
Yeah.
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (11:32.075)
Yeah. Yeah.
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (11:37.515)
Yeah. And Joel, here's a fun fact for you. 80 % of our country's toys and games come from China. So this right now is the time of year we start production for Q4. Nobody is producing anything right now. We are all paused because nobody knows what the heck is happening or what's going to happen. And we can't invest in the manufacturing for our Q4 products if we don't even know if we can bring them back to our own country. So now you're looking at potential delays.
Chad (11:50.436)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (11:54.222)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (12:07.423)
and empty shelves during Christmas because
Joel (12:10.382)
And that's great because the narrative we're hearing, or at least I am, is it's going to go from a dozen presents to 10. But it's not a financial issue, it's an accessibility issue. You're saying there won't even be toys to buy.
Chad (12:22.143)
I guess both.
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (12:24.449)
No, we're not producing anything right now. We're supposed to be producing our Q4 stuff right now. We are paused completely. If we get into it, I'm going down a different path and I'm to start production for Europe. But yeah, we're all, everybody's paused right now.
Chad (12:36.598)
I
Chad (12:40.758)
Well, I mean, if you, if you think about it, the 80 % of toys that are coming over that do get tariffed more than likely, they're not going to make it to the shelves. If they do make it to the shelves, they're going to be at a different price. And that means all the prices are, have been going up in the first place. So we have less buying power as Americans. So we were going to buy less presents in the first place, Joel. Now, now.
Prices are going up even more on those. So you talk about 10 instead of 12. Now it's more like two, possibly, right?
Joel (13:13.294)
They're going to be a bunch of Gen Xers running around with sticks as toys in the street. It's going to be back to 1970.
Chad (13:15.926)
That's what we did. I don't see that happening though. So, okay. So there's this big push for bringing manufacturing back and you have actually done the work. You've done the math. You said earlier, you've actually talked to manufacturing facilities and companies to be able to say, okay, look, we want to be able to do that here, but they're not...
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (13:32.205)
Yep.
Chad (13:44.586)
That's just not an option because of $2 million can't do it. You've also priced out what it would take for you to buy machines and manufacture yourself and turn yourself into this manufacturing entity. Is that feasible?
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (13:59.821)
No, not even close. In fact, yesterday, my brother and I went down to a silicone factory about half hour away from where warehouse is. And it's a factory that's been there for over 20 years, almost 30 years. And they manufacture some medical parts that are made out of silicone. So we went down to see their operation. Wonderful, wonderful, smart men and very helpful.
Chad (14:02.133)
What have been up?
Chad (14:09.654)
Mm.
Chad (14:19.158)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (14:25.639)
and they walked us through their new set up because they just invented a new product, they created all the machines from scratch, they're doing everything 100 % made in America. And it's very impressive. And for that one product, in the last year, it cost them $4.5 million to build out their manufacturing for that one product.
Chad (14:50.902)
Okay, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. So if you are a big company and you have cash, right? And you have cash or you can, you can, you obviously you can go and actually get big loans. That's one thing, but we're talking about small businesses here. Small businesses don't have the ability to get that leveraged because I mean, they're pretty much leveraged from day one as it is. So to be able to continue leveraging and over leveraging, it's just not an option. So what does it actually cost?
And you price this out to actually bring a machine here. Where would it come from? Go through that whole process when you were thinking about actually setting up operations here in the U
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (15:25.602)
Yeah.
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (15:28.961)
Yeah, so keep in mind I have eight products. So this is just the numbers for one, the Hero product, the Busy Baby Matz, Acetone Shark Tank. That product uses eight different machines in the process of its creation. I could get those machines from China, which is where they're made because that's where the manufacturing happens. They do not exist in the US. They are not made in the USA.
Chad (15:51.06)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (15:57.549)
Those machines I could probably get for just under half a million dollars. If I bought them outside of China, they would be 1.4 million for the same machines. So, okay, let's get them from China because that's cheaper. Oh, wait, we have to add on 145 % tariff to that cost. So now we're back over a million. So right there, that's a dead end. I can't afford that.
Joel (16:09.55)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (16:14.286)
You
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (16:25.431)
but then also still have to import the raw material. Again, also tariffed. But let's just say I have magical money tree. Actually, I do have a money tree in my office, and that's not the obstacle. Well, now I need someone to set this up and operate it. Where's the expertise? I'm not going on LinkedIn and finding a silicone manufacturing expert looking for a job right now. So who's going to set it up? Who's going to do the maintenance? Who's going to make sure the thing runs smoothly? But let's just say magically, the manufacturing fairy drops a guy.
Joel (16:29.838)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (16:44.608)
What? What?
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (16:54.861)
that can do that, or a girl. Now I gotta do keep up with production. So that one line can produce just over 100 mats per day. I sell more than that in a day. So that one line isn't gonna be enough. I'm gonna have to have a minimum of two of those production lines just to keep up with my current sales.
Chad (17:09.354)
How many machines then?
Chad (17:18.656)
That doesn't, it has nothing to do with growth. I mean, you stay, you want, you want to grow. Yeah.
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (17:21.227)
No, but the goal for me is to grow. Yeah, I want to go from 250 Walmarts to 4,000 Walmarts. Well, now I'm going to need 50 of those lines. It's it's not feasible for me at this point. Small businesses are not going to bring manufacturing back to the US. We can't. We're paycheck to paycheck.
Joel (17:29.912)
Yeah.
Joel (17:38.574)
Beth, you mentioned Europe. And I think what I would have said is, you know, maybe Mexico, maybe Vietnam. So as you're grimacing on that, how did you get to Europe and why are these other countries not an alternative to China? Or are there any alternatives to China?
Chad (17:38.774)
So, go ahead, go ahead.
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (17:59.213)
Well, I think you're talking manufacturing, right? I'm talking selling. There's babies all over the I'm not moving. Why on earth would I move my manufacturing? I have literally the most efficient, most proficient, most expertise manufacturing on the planet. They've been with me from day one, held my hand when the American companies laughed me out their doors. They've gone through ups and downs with me when Walmart last minute wanted me to pump out.
Joel (18:05.388)
Okay, let's talk about manufacturing. Yeah, let's go to manufacturing because
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (18:29.375)
a new product put on their shelves and I needed that opportunity. They dropped everything and made it happen in a record amount of time. When they've made mistakes, as everybody makes mistakes, they've owned it and corrected it. When I had knockoffs in China, they went to those factories and said, stop making that and stood up for me and stood up for my, have a Chinese patent. They went for on my behalf and stood up for me. I have no desire to.
Everybody's jumping right now. I'm going to move to Mexico. I'm going to move to Taiwan. Good luck. Have fun. I'm going to stay with my... They hold every high quality standard that we have for our products because these are products going in a baby's mouth. We have to meet American safety standards. We do third party testing on every single batch. We have a US consultant who makes sure our products are safe. They do an incredible job and they've been with me through everything. I am not going to walk away from them now.
Chad (19:25.472)
So from a sales standpoint, because...
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (19:25.505)
to go somewhere that's less quality and more expensive.
Joel (19:29.25)
He would rather go out of business than find alternatives.
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (19:31.861)
No, no, that's what I'm telling you. I'm going to sell to Europe. I'm going to sell to Australia. I'm going to sell to Canada. There's babies everywhere.
Chad (19:32.658)
No, she's looking at selling in Europe, right? That's what you're talking about. Yeah.
Joel (19:38.334)
Okay, so because there's no tariff.
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (19:43.915)
because they're willing to take my products and sell them. Our country currently is not allowing me to bring in my products. So I would love to continue selling to just Americans because that's what I can handle and that's what I know how to do. I don't know how to sell to any other country right now, but I'm going to learn real quick.
Joel (19:45.048)
or they're-
Joel (19:59.094)
Okay, glad I made that clarification. Thank you.
Chad (20:00.352)
Those are, yeah, those are, those are other challenges though, right? Because you don't know those markets. So therefore you don't have expertise on how to actually sell into those markets. And as we know, Europe has a bunch of countries in it and they're all different and they all have different cultures and regulations and so on and so forth. So it is much harder. So yes, you would definitely rather sell here on home soil, but since that's not an option, because you would go out of business, you've got to look for
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (20:02.237)
you. Yeah.
Chad (20:30.25)
Contingency and the contingency seems like Europe is are there other contingencies? Around the world that you you've started to kind of like research and prospectively start developing
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (20:40.353)
Yeah, mean, fortunately, because of the the press I've gotten, I've gotten outreach from everywhere. Dubai, the UAE, Australia, I've had a ton of outreach from Canada. I'm not having a hard time finding the people interested in selling the products. It's it's unreal how many people are interested in selling products. Now it's just like, how do I do that? Like, what are the regulations? What is the process? What are the contracts like? What do I have to watch out for so I'm not taken advantage or don't know? I don't know what I don't know.
So that's what I'm working as like crash course on global distribution.
Chad (21:17.622)
you
Joel (21:18.562)
My ears perked when you said the Chinese factory went to bat for you when knockoffs were being created. I think the narrative in America is that China is a bunch of thieves. They're taking all of our IP. They're repurposing products and undercutting and totally screwing the American businesses. But I'm hearing something different from you, but I'm curious, was them fighting
Chad (21:24.991)
IP.
Joel (21:46.572)
back against a knockoff product sort of by their own volition? Do they feel like they have government support to go after a company? what is it like working with China? Is the government one level, but then the commercial entity is another one? Are they hand in hand? Help me understand what it's like working with China.
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (22:09.877)
Yeah, I mean, it's a team effort. I can't actually help you understand because I don't understand a lot of it myself. The things I do understand about China is they care more about relationships and how you treat each other versus contracts. So, you know, when you treat each other well, the relationship is good and there's value and it creates long lasting good conditions.
Chad (22:38.302)
Hence, you're not wanting to leave them.
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (22:40.277)
Yeah, yeah. So when the first knockoff came out, it was actually the month before I aired on Shark Tank. I was fully expecting knockoffs to come out like three to four months after I was on air. No, the first one came out a month before. And because I have IP in China, my patent attorney has a counterpart in China who he reached out to and they did an investigation.
went to this factory, determined yes, they are absolutely making a knockoff. And then there's two routes you can go. You can do the legal route, which is similar to what we do here in the US. You can litigate. It's very long and very expensive. But in China, they also have another thing you can do, which is called a raid. And it's essentially what it sounds like. They go in and say, knock at the F off or we're going to burn your shit down.
Chad (23:31.318)
You
Joel (23:32.236)
Wow. Street, street justice, street justice.
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (23:32.237)
It's legit like my percent and so I didn't want to I didn't have the money to do the litigation route So I said well, how much does it cost to send someone in and politely ask them to stop? Knocking off my products and it was a very affordable price and I did that and they stopped the problem is I've spent over $15,000 this last year because an American company knocked me off
And when I went to take them down from Amazon, so Amazon has a great process where if you have IP, you can file your patents within Amazon system. When somebody lists a product that infringes on your patent, you just submit a case and say that they're infringing. They check the patent. They're like, yep, them down. And if they want to contest, they can. And we both put in $4,000. And then someone at Amazon will review the case. And whoever wins gets their money back. Whoever loses doesn't.
and then they get kicked off Amazon. So when this American company knocked us off, straight up knockoff, we put it in, Amazon took them down, their IP lawyers reached out to our IP lawyer and said, we'd just like you to know, we diligently designed around your patent. You may wanna resend your take down. So we looked at it, sure enough, they designed just enough of a difference, just enough of a difference to make it not infringing on my patent.
So I had to spend $15,000 to do some IP strategy stuff, and now they're not selling that product. But that was an American company, not a Chinese company.
Chad (25:05.878)
Hmm.
Okay. So we've been, we've been talking about obviously entrepreneurs, small business and the big reason behind that is I think it's important, especially for our listeners to understand that obviously, you know, small business jobs, but then times that by 10,000. Right. In companies like yours who are facing these issues, it's not just onesie twosies. We're talking about tens of thousands.
of entrepreneurs and companies who are having these issues. And I don't want to get you too fired up, but, but, but what about companies like Apple who are getting like a free pass possibly from these, these tariffs? Yeah. I mean, what, what, what about, what about those and how does, what kind of messaging does that actually send to the small business community when you have a
Joel (25:53.237)
Exemptions.
Chad (26:04.784)
large company who can afford if any, any company in the fucking world can afford to bring, you know, manufacturing to, you know, the U S United States and charge, you know, $3,500 for an iPhone. Apple can do that. Although they're perspective of getting exceptions.
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (26:25.229)
I'm going to take the politics out of this because we got to remove Apple because there's a lot of political associations with Apple. And they say since the first Trump administration that they're building a $5 billion factory in Texas. I'm not sure if ground is ever broken on that, but let's take Apple out. And then I'm to bring in Microsoft as a replacement, another big man. But the thing that gets me fired up is Lenovo. Have you heard of the brand Lenovo? It's computers, right? They do.
Chad (26:50.41)
Yes, computers.
Joel (26:50.798)
Yep, IBM.
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (26:54.891)
a little over $15 billion of sales per year in the US. They are a Chinese-owned brand. They no longer have to pay tariffs. They are exempt from paying tariffs, so their computers can come into our country right now, and we can buy $15 billion worth of computers from them, and they're all fat and happy. They don't need to make them in the USA. Why would they? They can make them where they're good at it and keep all their profit. But me?
a small, small business, American, veteran-owned business, I am going to potentially go out of business if I don't find a solution here because I can't afford the $230,000 tariff. So, I'm gonna talk too much more about that.
Joel (27:38.104)
Well, thankfully Walmart, Walmart, and hopefully Amazon are making some cases for you because they do have a big enough, name and bank account to do. So hopefully the Walmart meeting goes well. I'm curious. This is a show largely about the world of work employment. I know you have a small team, but I'm curious about what, what does this mean to your current team? What does it mean to your growth plans of adding headcount and
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (27:45.686)
Yeah.
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (27:54.784)
Okay.
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (28:05.229)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (28:05.866)
And knowing that most of hiring happens at small business, what do you think on a macro level we should be expecting as more and more small businesses like you are impacted from a headcount challenge?
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (28:21.047)
Yeah, my team was worried and they know I am determined we are going to succeed somehow. We're going to make it. No one's losing their job. I'm not going to let that happen. But what concerns me and what should concern Americans is the ripple effect of this. When we get a container shipped here from China, it comes into the St. Paul rail yard and there's a woman owned small business called semi-legal trucking.
Chad (28:38.987)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (28:48.289)
that picks up that container and brings it down to my warehouse for us to unload and put in. I checked on her the other day and said, how's it going for you? She says, well, we still have a few trickling in, but the outlook is not good. I might actually lose everything I've used to build this. Now she's an American owned company with American employees doing transportation and logistics around our country. If you look at the math, there's been over a hundred ships canceled so far since this has happened.
Each ship that comes over from China contains 8,000 to 10,000 containers. Those ships come to a port where we have hundreds or thousands of employees who work to unload them and put them on rails and put them on trucks. Those employees now don't have any containers to move. What these trucking companies who rely on the logistics of bringing of our economy, of our commerce, they're being affected. The manufacturers currently manufacturing in the US
that have clients who are working already on razor thin margins because they are paying extra to manufacture in the US, they're now being hit with import fees on their raw materials and they're afraid they can't raise their prices for their current clients because their current clients can't afford that and now they're gonna go out of business. Like the ripple effect of this is so much bigger than just people like me who manufacture in China.
Chad (30:09.942)
So what's the most discouraging? Because we get into these news narratives that don't seem to be rooted in reality in many cases. We just were watching one right before we came on. So I guess if it's not good for small business, it's just not good for the American people. Why are we seeing the antithesis of that on
news channels all over the place.
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (30:42.935)
You know, I think that I have unfortunately seen our country become more more divided in the last decade. And people are consumed, consume media. Like we learn things from watching media and media, it's hard to keep things just bipartisan and not make it about something or the other thing, one side or the other side. I have so many people telling me I deserve to fail because they think I voted for Trump.
Nobody deserves to fail. I don't care who they voted for. We're humans. What has happened to our humanity that this has all become about politics? And I don't even know what the politicians are thinking or doing. I'm trying to convince myself that there are some really intelligent people with a really outside the box strategy at play here. And obviously we can't know the strategy or it wouldn't work. And at some point this is going to come out and it's going to be the most brilliant thing that ever happened.
Chad (31:19.318)
Mm-hmm.
Joel (31:34.456)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (31:42.561)
That's what I'm doing in my dreamland because I don't want to think that this is all for, you know, billionaires become richer and all the things we're seeing in the media. But what's the most disheartening to me is the humans and how we're treating each other as Americans outside of the media, outside of politics. If you look at the comments on my videos, people are just being hateful to one another. And unless we come together as Americans and band together for our country, like all this fighting is
Chad (31:44.49)
Yes.
Joel (31:44.493)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (32:11.157)
making things worse, it's not making anything better.
Chad (32:13.462)
Yeah, which is why we need to have these no bullshit dollars and cents conversations around how it's impacting business. And obviously if it's impacting business, then we've got to take a look at job growth is going to impact job growth. If impacts job growth, well, then those individuals are not going to have money in their pockets. They don't have money in their pockets. They can't buy stuff. Right. So, I mean, from our standpoint, trying to educate and entertain, but educate the industry and our listeners about
how this actually has this downstream effect is incredibly important to us.
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (32:46.285)
Hmm.
Yeah, it's scary. don't know it works.
Joel (32:48.93)
By the way, Walmart Walmart employees around 2 million associates. So if the shelves are empty, how many Walmart employees are going to lose their jobs? That is Beth. Benaki everybody at busy baby Beth for our listeners who want to know more about you. Maybe buy some some products. Where would you send them?
Beth Benike - Busy Baby (33:11.245)
Yeah, if we have any left, actually we have a really great product that's a bib that has a tether system, so it's great for restaurants. We have a lot of those. Busybaby.com is where you can find us. Busybabymat on all the socials. And if anybody has words of wisdom and ways to help me, you can find me on LinkedIn.
Chad (33:11.722)
in Europe.
Joel (33:32.046)
Christmas in Canada, Chad. Christmas in Portugal and Canada. That is another one in the can. We out.