When Beth Benike was named Minnesota’s Small Business Person of the Year back in March, she thought it was a sign things were looking up for her business. Nine days later, President Trump’s sweeping tariffs went into effect, flipping her world upside down.

(ABC 6 News) – When Beth Benike was named Minnesota’s Small Business Person of the Year back in March, she thought it was a sign things were looking up for her business.

Nine days later, President Trump’s sweeping tariffs went into effect, flipping her world upside down.

“The administration said ‘okay, you think you’re small business person of the year? Prove it!’ So here I am, I’m gonna prove it, I’m gonna stay in business,” said Benike.

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When President Trump announced tariffs on goods imported from other countries like China, Canada and Mexico, the idea was to bring manufacturing back to the U.S.

For Benike, that’s not an option because her business is too small to afford domestic manufacturing prices.

“We don’t have the scale, one factory said we need to start with $2 million commitment for the year,” said Benike about her research into U.S. manufacturing companies.

Three months worth of products that Benike already paid for are stuck in China because she can’t afford the $230,000 cost of the tariffs to bring them overseas.

She’s not the only one. Representative Kelly Morrison (D-MN) says she’s spoken with many small business owners across Minnesota and the country who are in a very similar position.

“People are really scared right now, they’re scrambling, they don’t know what to do, they don’t know what to expect, and many are in the same position that Beth is, where there’s a finite amount of product they have now and they can’t afford to bring the rest in,” said Rep. Morrison.

Having recently expanded her products into Target, with future plans to expand into Walmart too, Benike says those contracts are in jeopardy if she can’t get her supply to fulfill those orders.

Benike is exploring her options to get the rest of her products out of China, as her current warehouse supply is dwindling and will only last another 6-8 weeks.

“There’s something called the foreign trade zone warehouse, we could put our products in one of those warehouses and then pull out a pallet at a time as needed, and pay the tariffs as we go instead of in one lump sum,” said Benike.

Another option would be to sell the products in another country, such as Australia or South Korea, but the company would receive much lower profits.

“Unfortunate part about that is that we didn’t budget for selling at a wholesale price, so you sell it at distributor cost. It’s much less, they probably would get a 60% discount,” said Benike.

While she’s figuring out the next steps for her business, Benike has launched a GoFundMe to keep operations afloat, though she wishes she wasn’t in that position.

“A lot of people that don’t understand why I have to manufacture in China. People say, ‘if you don’t make in America, you deserve to fail.’ No one deserves to fail. No one deserves to lose their everything, their house, my house is on the line here. To get my inventory for Target and Walmart, I had to take out a loan and use my house as collateral,” said Benike.

Benike says she’s reached out to Representative Brad Finstad (R-MN) multiple times for help, but didn’t get much of an answer from his team, simply being told these things take time to work out.

When ABC 6 asked Rep. Finstad about Benike’s situation in an exclusive one-on-one interview last week, he said he’s working on solutions.

RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Rep. Brad Finstad discusses a wide range of topics in an exclusive ABC 6 News interview

“Understanding the roadblocks that have been in the way for domestic producers to provide that company with those plastic products. Why don’t we do it anymore?” said Rep. Finstad.

Though Rep. Finstad supports President Trumps tariffs, he says he’s going to do whatever he can to make sure small business owners get through this difficult period.

“Whether it’s, you know, finding new source sourcing for their products, whether it’s seeing if there’s domestic companies that can maybe retool their current facilities to provide those things, I mean that’s the conversations we have to have in the short-term,” said Rep. Finstad.

Now, Benike is partnering with Rep. Morrison to call on the Trump administration to exempt small business owners from these tariffs.

“Small businesses are not gonna bring manufacturing back to the U.S., so let us be exempt and at least stay in business,” said Benike.

Rep. Morrison is additionally calling on the administration to exempt all baby products from tariffs to help make it easier for Americans to grow families, something she believes is a bipartisan issue.

“In President Trump’s first administration with his tariff war at that point, he did exempt baby products, so we were hopeful that maybe he would this time, but it has been met with deaf ears so far,” said Rep. Morrison.

Benike will be in Washington D.C. on May 4-5 to receive her award for being Minnesota Small Business Owner of the Year. She says she’ll take that opportunity to keep speaking up for small business owners like her hit hard by these tariffs.

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