By Mike Harris Wednesday, April 9th, 2025

Uncertainty hangs over Central Coast businesses as the impacts of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs start to unfold. 

Industries in the tri-county region are taking a wait-and-see attitude, though some have begun canceling orders after China announced April 9 that it was raising tariffs on U.S. products to 84%.

“I’m hearing that a lot of companies and factories are canceling orders because they can’t afford the tariffs,” Ray Bowman of the Camarillo-based Economic Development Collaborative, a business consulting nonprofit for Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, told the Business Times April 9.

“My friends in the supply chain are on the phones right now going, ‘man, we have to make sure that we’re survivable,’” Bowman, the director of the organization’s Small Business Development Center, said.

Bowman said he’s also seeing companies getting orders canceled on them “Because the fear, if you’re a Chinese exporter, is that you may not get paid.”

China’s announcement came after Trump imposed a 104% tariff on Chinese goods.

The Trump Administration has levied a wide swath of tariffs on U.S. trading partners, arguing they will force companies to make their products in the U.S., creating more jobs and increasing wages.

Tariffs — taxes on imported goods — are paid by importers.

To cover their increased costs, importers typically raise prices for their goods and pass them along to consumers.

“There’s general uncertainty out there, and that uncertainty is causing delays in supply chains,” Harold Edwards, president and CEO of Santa Paula-based lemon and avocado producer Limoneira told the Business Times April 7.

Even so, Edwards believes the tariffs could ultimately help Limoneira.

Currently, he said, there is no tariff on avocados from Mexico, which supplies the U.S. with nearly 90% of avocado imports.

“But most likely any threat of tariffs would increase the price of avocados that people buy in the U.S.,” Edwards said.

“Which fundamentally and ultimately will be a good thing for us as the biggest producer of avocados in the country,” he said. 

Port of Hueneme officials don’t anticipate an immediate, short-term reduction in auto imports due to Trump’s 25% tariffs on passenger vehicles.

The port and their automotive manufacturing customers in Japan, South Korea, Germany, and the UK are taking a wait-and-see attitude toward the tariffs, Kristin Decas, the port’s CEO and director, told the Business Times April 4.

Trump announced those tariffs March 26.

“A 25% tariff on the auto industry caught us off guard,” Decas said.

“It’s happened very fast and so we’re still taking some time to unpack it all and digest it,” she said.

But, she noted, in talking to the port’s auto industry customers, “all of them are really aligned in their thinking that it’s not appropriate to shift any production levels at this time.

“They feel that there are more negotiations to be had and that perhaps these tariffs are not going to be permanent,” Decas said. 

And thus, “they’re not going to do anything hyper-reactive in their supply chain,” she said.

Instead, they’re going to continue production levels as forecasted, Decas said.

“And they plan to bring those volumes here through the Port of Hueneme,” she said.

Peter Zierhut, vice president, outside operations of Oxnard-based Haas Automation, said that the machine tool company projects that in the next 12 months, it could pay more in duties than it has in the past 10 years. 

It imports parts from China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, India, Europe, Canada, Mexico and elsewhere, he said.

The cost of those imports could increase significantly in some cases, Zierhut said.

“It’s going to probably be almost all of the sources we use for import,” he said.

Jim Dantona, president/CEO of the San Luis Obispo Chamber of Commerce, said that like Haas, precision manufacturing engineering businesses in that area also import parts from throughout the world.

“It’s going to hurt every business at least for a while,” he said. “It’s just a question of for how much and how long.”

Hopefully, he said, “it doesn’t cause supply chain problems and do real long-term damage to the economy as we get into trade wars maybe with everyone.”

Tri-county biotech companies, including those in the Conejo Valley’s life sciences hub, could also be impacted by the tariffs.

Westlake Village attorney Brent Reinke, founder and chair of life sciences support group BioScience Alliance, noted that the biotech firms import from China a fairly high percentage of chemicals used in the drug development process.

“I don’t know how quickly this is going to trickle down to start affecting actual costs of things on the consumer side of it, but certainly it’s going to affect costs of things to the companies that are developing and producing drugs,” Reinke said.

Bowman said regional exporters should be concerned too.

“How are reciprocal tariffs going to affect your export sales?” he said.

“You have to build that in,” Bowman said. “In other words, working closely with your overseas distributors, your overseas relationships, and understanding how that’s going to affect your forecasting.”

He said that as tariffs increase, so too will the cost of surety bonds importers must post with customs officials. 

In an April 2 statement, Michelle Korsmo, president and CEO of the National Restaurant Association, warned of the negative impacts of Trump’s tariffs on the dining industry. 

“Applying new tariffs at this scale will create change and disruption that restaurant operators will have to navigate to keep their restaurants open,” she said.

The biggest concerns for restaurant operators—from community restaurants to national brands—are that tariffs will hike food and packaging costs and add uncertainty to managing availability while pushing prices up for consumers, she said.

Korsmo said her group plans to ask the White House to exempt food and beverages from the tariffs.

Los Angeles-based Beacon Economics, a research and consulting firm, said that California’s merchandise export trade was nominally valued at $14.8 billion in February, a robust 7.3% gain over the $13.8 billion recorded in February 2024. 

“This may be the last bit of positive trade news we will be reporting for quite a while,” Jock O’Connell, Beacon’s international trade advisor, said in a press release. 

“There can be no doubt that President Trump’s new tariffs will severely limit the ability of California businesses to sell their products abroad,” he said.

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