Daviess County, which includes Washington (pictured), voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump in the 2024 election. Daviess County is tied with Franklin County for the highest percentage of Trump voters in Indiana — more than 81 percent. (Clayton Baumgarth/WTIU News)
Being a small business owner in 2025 isn’t easy.
Samantha Killough, owner of A Touch of Heaven in Washington, Indiana, said for her Christian merchandise store, there’s competition from larger operations on all fronts.
“I don't sell a whole lot of books anymore because Amazon always has them on sale, and their sale price is what I buy them at generally,” she said. “So I can't just mark everything down and be like, ‘Okay, well, I’ll match Amazon.’”
Killough is no stranger to hard times. She and her husband bought the store in 2019 and immediately had to contend with the pandemic.
But Amazon isn’t their only worry at the moment. Tariffs will make some of their biggest sellers more expensive.
“We'd like to think they're U.S. made, but they're printed in China,” she said. “Even our kids Bibles that are about 40 to 60 bucks, I'm imagining they're all gonna go up. It's gonna make times harder.”
Bibles and bible holders are about to go up in price at her store. And while those increased prices may hurt sales, Killough believes in the use of tariffs to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. She recognizes the challenges that come with that.
“I see the point of trying to get things to be U.S. made,” she said. “I would love to have things U.S. made, but again, when we do U.S. made, it's not as affordable.”
Next door to her, Top Notch Boutique is also contending with tariffs and the higher cost of selling women’s clothing.
“We manufacture a little bit, we've started recently, and they've already messaged me saying, ‘Hey, the price is going to be three or four more dollars higher because the tariffs,’” said store owner Alyssa Wagner.
Daviess County, which includes Washington, voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump in the 2024 election. Daviess County is tied with Franklin County for the highest percentage of Trump voters in Indiana — more than 81 percent.
And according to national Associated Press polling, the biggest issue on voters’ minds was their wallets; 40 percent of voters said the economy was the most important problem facing the country.
Now voters are watching as two of the largest economies in the world wrestle over tariffs, and the impact is hitting the most remote parts of Indiana.
“We're just little farmers out here in the middle of nowhere, Indiana,” said Dwight Ludwig, a farmer near Cory, Indiana, in Clay County. “And it's a huge thing going on. You know, two of the biggest countries in the world, the most powerful people in the world are deciding these things for us.”
Ludwig farms corn, soybeans and wheat. And while he bought the seed and other inputs needed to do his job in the fall of last year, he worries about making those same purchases later this year.
“All the supply that was there is going to be eliminated,” he said. “We're going to be having to import new stuff. So if the trade war doesn't get taken care of by that time, we're going to see a huge increase in price, I'm sure.”
Ludwig said he has already seen price increases in some chemicals needed for planting season.
“There are a lot of ag companies that are Chinese owned, so we're seeing some of those fertilizers and chemicals especially take a pretty good hit,” he said.
The soybean market will affect Hoosier farmers most. China is the number one importer of U.S. soybeans in the world.
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For weeks, there was a 145 percent tariff between China and the U.S. Now, for the next 90 days, they stand at 30 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent on U.S. goods.
Kyle Anderson, an economist with IU’s Kelley School of Business said the soybean industry may need to find new buyers for its goods fast or risk wasting tons of materials or selling at a loss.
“Things like beans and corn are traded on global markets, so we can see demand for that go down and softening prices that will hurt farmers and agriculture in Indiana,” he said.
Other countries faced significant tariffs in early April, but the Trump administration also put those on a 90-day pause, leaving the possibility of more tariffs hanging over the heads of business owners.
That uncertainty is causing fear for investors.
“It's really creating a problem, not only for economists, but really for all, especially in the business community,” Anderson said. “Business managers don't know how to plan for this. They don't know how to deal with it.”
There’s also a strong possibility that these tariff uncertainties get dragged out as the courts try to determine if President Trump is overstepping the bounds of his office or not.
“It's not clear that the President hasn't exceeded the authority of the administration to levy these which means it's going to play out in the courts, and that adds uncertainty to what will happen and the timing of everything,” Anderson said.
He added that for tariffs to do what Trump intends, they need to stay in place long enough for stateside manufacturing to build up and become profitable, which will take longer than he’ll be in office.
“It's going to take you three or four years to get a facility up and running, and then you need those profits from 10 or 15 years from now,” Anderson said. “There's no reason to be confident that these policies are going to be in place that long into the future.”
And while voters like Killough and Ludwig recognize how price increases brought on by Trump’s tariffs will affect their businesses, they both have faith that the initial struggle will pay off in the end.
“They keep saying short term pain for long term gain … I believe that,” Ludwig said. “I think that we will eventually get there. It's definitely going to be painful. This crop year is, you know, we got high inputs and low sale prices. So it's going to be tough.”
China and the U.S. said in a meeting in Geneva that they would further work to “establish a mechanism to continue discussions about economic and trade relations.”
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