[lbotos]

1. You consistently use the wrong their. I’m calling it out because I used to do the same thing all the time and someone once told me and it made my writing better.

2. I go to a local Japanese restaurant (one location in my city) and they order their dashi directly from Japan. International tariffs will absolutely impact them. I also just ordered some historically accurate stone mortar from a small business in Pennsylvania. It’s literally a guy and his family on a farm mixing sand and lime. They import their lime directly from Peru.

These are two small businesses in both senses of the word (profit and scale) that are engaged in direct international trade.

Also, I don’t know if you realize but the internet makes ordering things from anywhere in the world pretty easy. You can get a lot of items to a port as an individual importer. Getting them through customs is another story but placing international orders is very doable for a “small business”. (I’m not even in business and I place international orders all the time that are now impacted by tariffs.)