The unexpected cost of tariffs for some small business owners

Summary

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Consider This from NPR

Episode: The Unexpected Cost of Tariffs for Some Small Business Owners
Date: July 25, 2026

Episode Overview

This episode of Consider This delves into the hidden financial struggles U.S. small business owners have faced as a result of tariffs imposed during the Trump administration. While tariffs are often sold to the public as a means of benefiting Americans, the episode underscores the unexpected and severe economic burdens they have imposed on small business operators—particularly through the rise of high-cost “merchant cash advances” (MCAs) used to cover unbudgeted tariff expenses. The episode is guided by NPR business correspondent Alina Selyukh and includes firsthand accounts from affected entrepreneurs.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. How Tariffs Hit Small Businesses

• Background Context:
  • Alina Selyukh recounts her years reporting on retail, noting a shift in 2023-2024 as tariffs began affecting small companies much more severely than larger ones.
  • Many small businesses faced tens of thousands in unexpected fees to claim goods at U.S. ports (00:38).
    • “Their goods landed at ports from around the world as usual, but claiming them suddenly cost tens of thousands of unbudgeted dollars.” — Alina Selyukh [00:38]
• Consequences:
  • Some could not cover these costs and risked losing their products; others resorted to murky financing to stay afloat (00:52).

2. The Rise of Merchant Cash Advances

• The Entrepreneur’s Experience:
  • Joshua Esnard, who made his fortune selling haircut kits, shared how relentless pitches for fast cash bombarded him and other small business owners once tariffs hit (04:20).
    • “They've been barraged by these never ending text messages and voicemails of people offering them cash fast.” — Alina Selyukh [04:22]
• Nature of MCAs:
  • MCAs are not traditional loans; they resemble payday advances for companies and are largely unregulated (05:34).
  • Payouts are quick but come with exorbitant fees, daily/weekly repayment schedules, and little legal protection or rate capping (06:32).
    • "The money that they give you comes really fast, but they take payments daily or weekly straight from your bank account. And the fees they can charge legally don't have a cap." — Alina Selyukh [06:52]

3. The Debt Trap

• Examples of Debt Accrued:
  • Joshua Esnard took three merchant cash advances totaling $950,000 to cover tariffs, but fees ballooned the debt to $1.2 million (07:45).
    • “So $950,000 is what he borrowed. With the fees, his actual debt was $1.2 million.” — Alina Selyukh [07:48]
  • Another small business owner took $47,000 but owed $72,500 due to MCA fees (08:50).
  • Esnard compared MCA lenders to the mob:
    • “You get it from the mob, and that's the MCA.” — Joshua Esnard [08:30]

4. Systemic Factors and Vulnerability

• Why Not Use Traditional Banks?:
  • Many small business owners cannot get traditional bank loans due to lack of credit history, business age, or personal financial limitations, leaving MCAs as the only option (06:32).
    • Start-up entrepreneurs and immigrants are particularly at risk.
• Stigma and Silence:
  • Business owners are often reluctant to speak publicly about their reliance on MCAs out of shame, contrasting with the openness around tariff struggles (09:21).
    • “Often they don't want to use their names. They...feel like it reflects poorly on them as business owners. They feel ashamed of the choices.” — Alina Selyukh [09:30]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the rush for fast cash:
  • “They can offer you as much money as you'll take, but they will charge you whatever they want.” — Joshua Esnard [01:07]
• On the pressures faced by small businesses with goods stuck at port:
  • "When you're desperate and customs has your product at the dock and you got to deliver to Walmart, Target or whatever...if you don't deliver to these retailers, they drop your product, so you gotta pay it. So where do you get the money from? You get it from the mob, and that's the mca." — Joshua Esnard [08:30]
• On the culture of silence:
  • “You bring it up in a group of small business owners and everyone gets really riled up...But when you start talking to small business owners for whom merchant cash advances have snowballed, often they don't want to use their names.” — Alina Selyukh [09:23]

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Timeline & Timestamps

• 00:38 — How tariffs blindsided small business owners with sudden, steep expenses
• 01:07 — Joshua Esnard on the cost and danger of quick loans
• 04:20 — Alina Selyukh shares the behind-the-scenes of her reporting and introduces Joshua Esnard’s situation
• 05:34 — Explanation of merchant cash advances and how they differ from traditional loans
• 06:32 — The key role of cash timing and the limitations of conventional credit options
• 07:45 — The staggering figures: $950,000 borrowed, $1.2 million owed
• 08:30 — Esnard likens MCA lenders to “the mob”
• 09:21 — Selyukh discusses the stigma and hidden epidemic of MCA reliance

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Closing Thoughts

The episode sheds light on an underreported consequence of tariff policy: small businesses turning to high-risk financial products just to stay operational. It is a narrative of struggle, ingenuity, and, ultimately, about the structural vulnerabilities baked into the U.S. small business ecosystem—particularly in chaotic, high-pressure economic moments. Selyukh’s reporting not only tracks policy fallout but also offers an unusually candid glimpse into the emotional toll of financial desperation in entrepreneurial America.

Transcript

[Debbie Elliott]

It's Consider this where every day we go deep on one big news story. For years, NPR business correspondent Alina Selyuk has reported on the world of retail shoppers and sellers. From Walmart to the neighborhood cafe, Amazon

[Alina Selyuk]

has agreed to pay $1 billion in civil penalty. What I heard from Costco and Walmart, they both said their lower gas prices have people lining up, actually.

[Debbie Elliott]

But last year her reporting took a turn. She was starting to hear that small businesses were being hit hard by the Trump administration tariffs, especially before the Supreme Court struck many of those tariffs down.

[Alina Selyuk]

When American small business owners scrambled to pay unexpected tariffs to the US Government, their goods landed at ports from around the world as usual, but claiming them suddenly cost tens of thousands of unbudgeted dollars.

[Debbie Elliott]

Many couldn't cover the costs and face the prospect of not being able to get their products out of customs. Some had to t a murky world of financing to stay afloat. Here's what one small business owner, Joshua

[Joshua Esnard]

Esnard, told they can offer you as much money as you'll take, but they will charge you whatever they want.

[Debbie Elliott]

Esnard ended up accruing hundreds of thousands of dollars in lending costs and fees to cover those tariff payments. Consider this When President Trump invokes tariffs, he promises they'll benefit Americans. But the experience of some small business owners tells a different story. From npr, I'm Debbie Elliott.

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[Debbie Elliott]

With President Trump announcing new tariffs, we wanted to speak to Alina about what she's learned covering the unexpected costs small businesses are shouldering. For this week's Reporter's Notebook, I began by asking her how she started Covering

[Alina Selyuk]

the story for me personally, actually. The day that President Trump announced his big tariffs, which was called the Liberation Day, I was physically at a fly in of small business owners organized by the National Retail Federation. So it.

[Debbie Elliott]

Serendipitous.

[Alina Selyuk]

It was quite serendipitous. And of course, tariffs became the conversation of the afternoon. And I met a large group of retailers at that event who immediately were able to like, give very specific examples of how tariffs will affect their specific businesses. And I stayed in touch with those folks, and then they put me in touch with other folks, the small business community, especially people who are kind of out there talking about their business quite openly. It's a pretty interconnected group. I kind of grew a long list of business owners who I text with on the regular just to check in. And that is kind of how I stayed on top of how tariffs were playing out for real humans running businesses in the U.S. so one of the

[Debbie Elliott]

people that you met during this is this colorful entrepreneur who made millions selling haircut kits of all things. Tell us about him and where his story took you.

[Alina Selyuk]

Yeah, you're talking about Joshua Esnard. Actually, a bit of an interesting backstory of how this happened. As I mentioned, I was in touch with a large group of retailers, small business owners, and at yet another fly in, we at NPR invited a whole bunch of them to come to the office for a roundtable, which was one of the most illuminating experiences of terrorists. So we had, I don't know, like a dozen small business owners around the table just talking about what Terrace have been like. And Joshua Esnart was one of those people. And at some point he brought up this fact that since tariffs have started costing small business owners a ton of money, they've been barraged by these never ending text messages and voicemails of people offering them cash fast. It's like, hey, you're probably struggling to pay your tariff. How about $100,000 tomorrow? And as soon as he brought up these pitches, the room just kind of erupted. Small business owners were like, oh my gosh, no one talks about this. This is like insane. Every day we're getting these pitches day, hour after hour, multiple times a day.

[Debbie Elliott]

So who are the pitches coming from?

[Alina Selyuk]

Many of them come from this industry called merchant cash advances. Merchant cash advances are not loans. They're kind of their own thing. But some experts compare them to like payday loans. Except for businesses, they offer extreme amounts of money, hundreds of thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars, very fast, in exchange for a cut of sales. It's an Unregulated, very shadowy world of financiers. And you could get a merchant cash advance from Amazon affiliated or Amazon backed provider, or it could be like a Wall street firm. It's a really chaotic, really large industry.

[Debbie Elliott]

So here's, here's my question. Like, so why would they need to go to these like payday loan kind of operation or this quick cash operation versus just like their line of credit from a regular bank or whatever?

[Alina Selyuk]

Typically the main thing is that it's really fast. A traditional loan can take weeks, months. And if you need money now, a merchant cash advance can deliver that. Many small businesses do have a line of credit with a bank. Many really small businesses run out of personal credit cards. Like it's just me and my credit card buying my supplies and selling stuff on Etsy or whatever. But for a lot of people, traditional banks and traditional lenders are simply not an option. I've talked to at this point close to a dozen people who ended up taking merchant cash advances who did try to get a loan from a bank and got turned down. They went to a credit union, got turned down. A lot of it is first time business owners, really young businesses that just don't have kind of a history. And a lot of immigrants started businesses end up in merchant cash advances. And the wild thing about this is because merchant cash advances are not loans, lending laws mostly don't apply to them. So they don't have to be licensed lenders. The money that they give you comes really fast, but they take payments daily or weekly straight from your bank account. And the fees they can charge legally don't have a cap. And so to go back to Joshua, his business is selling hair care accessories. His kind of claim to fame actually is the Cud Buddy, which is this kind of template that you can hold against your head and give yourself really sharp edges as you're cutting your hair. He ended up taking, I actually have the numbers here. It was really wild. He took, ended up three cash advances for a total of $950,000 because he needed that money to pay tariffs. He just didn't have cash sitting around for that. So 9:50, 950,000 is what he borrowed with the fees. His actual debt was $1.2 million. So several hundred thousand dollars were the fees that merchant cash advances take.

[Joshua Esnard]

So when you're desperate and customs has your product at the dock and you got to deliver to Walmart, Target or whatever, and you have to clear that out and then you're screwed because if you don't deliver to these retailers, they drop your product, so you got to pay it. So where do you get the money from? You get it from the mob and that's the mca.

[Alina Selyuk]

And like I said, I've talked to at this point close to a dozen businesses who ended up in a similar boat. One woman I talked to took out $47,000. Her actual sum that was due back was $72,500. So 47 versus almost 73. And this kind of lending is exploding. It is by far the fastest growing way that small business owners are getting money.

[Debbie Elliott]

Is there anything that surprised you as you went deeper into the reporting on these lenders and small businesses?

[Alina Selyuk]

I think the thing that surprised me the most is just how common this experience is and how little people talk about it. You bring it up in a group of small business owners and everyone gets really riled up or everybody somebody knows, somebody who had struggled to pay merchant cash advance. But when you start talking to small business owners for whom merchant cash advances have snowballed, often they don't want to use their names. They don't want to talk publicly about their business. They feel like it reflects poorly on them as business owners. They feel ashamed of the choices. And that level of conversation was quite different from, you know, covering tariffs where most small business owners would quite eagerly share their experience with paying terrorists. So those two kind of in parallel were very different things to report on in the past year.

[Debbie Elliott]

Well, thanks so much. NPR's business correspondent Alina Selyuk. Thanks.

[Alina Selyuk]

Thank you.

[Debbie Elliott]

This episode was produced by Gabriel Sanchez. It was edited by Adam Raney and Emily Kopp. Our director is Erica Ryan and our interim executive producer is Quite Courtney Dorney. It's consider this from npr. I'm Debbie Elliott.

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