Northbrook small business joins national campaign against tariffs
A $5 million nationwide YouTube ad campaign launched last week featuring small businesses across the U.S. affected by tariffs, including Northbrook-based Baby Paper.
The campaign, called Small Businesses Against Tariffs, is funded by the Defending Democracy Together Institute based in Washington, D.C. The nonpartisan nonprofit seeks to spotlight the impact of tariffs on small businesses, workers and consumers. It’s separate from the conservative organization Defending Democracy Together.
The ads are targeting small business-minded audiences through financial, business, coffee and other issue-specific channels. In coming months, the campaign will expand to television, billboards and additional streaming platforms nationwide.
“Tariffs are paid by American importers, and those costs are passed on to businesses and consumers in the form of higher prices,” a news release from the campaign said. “Ultimately, they cause businesses to have to scale back operations, cut staff, or shut down altogether, with devastating consequences for these businesses and the local communities they serve.”
Sari Wiaz founded Baby Paper, a manufacturer and distributor of baby products, around 2009. Its goods are sold by about 700 specialty retailers in the U.S., Canada and Europe, as well as online at Walmart, Amazon and Buy Buy Baby.
Wiaz felt the impact of tariffs immediately last spring. She had to pay 30% to 54% more for products, depending on when shipments arrived at U.S. ports. Wiaz has since raised prices 10% to 20% to cover higher costs.
“It’s also trying to predict whether the tariffs will go up or go down and when to bring product in,” she said.
Due to confusion with customs, Wiaz also experienced delays and lost packages.
“Because this was a huge expense for me, I began to cut back on how much product I brought in, just to manage my cash flow. This has created a new challenge — being out of product at a time when stores are restocking after the holidays,” she said.
Small businesses “do not have a way to just pivot and bring manufacturing to the U.S. Many of us, like me, have been using the same factories for much of our existence and don’t have the ability to find new sourcing with no lead time,” Wiaz said.
Some companies like hers are in “survival mode,” she said, especially because there has been no help from the government and resources have been pulled. “With cuts to the Small Business Administration, defunding SCORE Mentors and the tariffs, many small businesses will not survive,” she said. SCORE Mentors is an SBA business advisory service.
The nine businesses featured in the campaign also include Eva St. Clair and Rebecca Melsky, founders of children’s fashion brand Princess Awesome & Boy Wonder. They are based in Washington, D.C., but the company’s warehouse and fulfillment center is in Lyons, southwest of Chicago. Melsky grew up in Evanston.
“The first larger tariff bills came in with our first shipments from China in early 2025. Over 2025, we paid an additional $30,000 beyond what we would have paid without Trump's tariffs,” Melsky said.
“We are now staring down even higher tariffs as most of our shipments were only hit with the 10% reciprocal tariff. Our business cannot withstand this increase in our costs. We've cut our salaries, reduced production and raised some prices. We hope we can make it through 2026 without closing our doors,” Melsky said.
Over the course of 2025, the average tariff rate on U.S. imports increased from 2.6% to 13%, according to analysis released last week by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Nearly 90% of the tariffs’ economic burden fell on U.S. firms and consumers, researchers said.
Because of tariffs, in the long run, the U.S. economy is 0.3% smaller, the equivalent of $100 billion annually in 2025 dollars, according to a Yale Budget Lab analysis in January.