The Opinions - Tariffs Could Ruin My Small Business

Episode Date: April 28, 2025

President Trump’s back and forth on tariffs is causing instability and uncertainty across industries, and some of the hardest hit have been small businesses. On this episode, the entrepreneur Yair Reiner explains what it takes to make his product, the Frywall, and how the trade war with China is increasing his production costs and making it harder to work with his partners overseas. He argues that this is disastrous for family-run businesses and is a blow to entrepreneurship in America.Thoughts? Email us at [e-mail] episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Vishakha Darbha. It was edited by Alison Bruzek and Kaari Pitkin. The rest of the show's production team includes Derek Arthur and Jillian Weinberger. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud. Original music by Pat McCusker, Isaac Jones, Efim Shapiro and Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. A lot of you put in the garlic at the beginning, but I find that if you put the garlic in the beginning, it can burn, and there's nothing nastier than burned garlic. My name is Ya'e Riner. I'm an entrepreneur. I'm the inventor of the frywall, and I own Gowanus Kitchen Lab. For the last several months, running my business has become a lot more complicated. How prepared is this nation, the United States, to deal with the consequences economic and

otherwise of President Trump's global tariffs? China has announced a new tariff of 125% on U.S. imports, matching the recent increase from the U.S. I understand that there's kind of a street fight happening here between China and the U.S. and maybe there's historical reasons for why that makes sense. But at the same time, I feel like there's no consideration being given to the people on the crossfire like my company. These numbers just keep changing, as you know,

and what we've just confirmed from the White House is that the new total rate against China is now 145% tariffs. Entrepreneurs like me, I think we're scrappy. You don't get to have a business, even a small one, without being able to react to changes in the environment, changes in the competitive landscape. But it's hard, and it's particularly hard if you feel that the ground is shifting beneath your feet arbitrarily.

I would be able to deal with a tariff on China. I'd be able to deal with an embargo on Chinese goods, but I need time to be able to react. Right now, I don't have the time. I don't have the line. of sight. All we've been told for the moment is that there's a three-month pause on terrorists in other countries. Without having clarity on what the tariff situation is going to be in the future, it's impossible for companies, even ones with relatively simple products like mine

to do any kind of planning. The friwall is a conical cylinder. A lot of people say it resembles the cone of shame or what's called the e-collar for dogs, and you just kind of fit it against the sides of the pan. I like to use carbon steel, which is kind of what you have in a lot of traditional restaurants. And here I have the frywall collection. So today we're going to cook chopcha, vegetarian. I recently gave a demo of the frywall in my kitchen in Brooklyn. So we're going to cook up our egg, cut that into pieces. Then we're going to quickly saute the vegetables, throw in the spinach,

that and then put everything back together with the yam noodles. About 10 years ago, I was in the kitchen preparing duck breasts for my kids. They'd somehow fall in love with duck breast during a recent trip to their aunt's house in France. And I made these duck breast, and they made just a horrific mess on the stovetop. So the next time I was preparing to make them the duck, I thought I got to find a solution. And just out of desperation, I wound up wrapping my pan with some aluminum foil, creating a kind of cone so that the splatterer would be caught, but the vapors could evaporate, and also I could reach in and flip the duck breast. And astonishingly, it worked, and it worked really well to the extent that I had a bit of a shiver down my spine thinking, wow, have I just invented the greatest splatter protection known to man. kind. And now the frywall is going to go into play. I'm going to put it right into the pan.

Got all these vegetables like poof, all at one time. The frywall catches them all, and they all fall right under the pan without a single one falling on a stove top. When I originally invented the frywall, I thought I was just curing a problem for the worst kinds of mess, the kind that you'd get from frying or browning meat. But it turns out that there's always mess from cooking, and the frywall seems to take care of all of it. All right, so let me put some of this chapche on our plate. All right, I think we're ready to eat. And so I decided to pursue bringing this idea to a reality.

And 10 years later, it's still on the market and doing well. When I first conceived of the frywall, I had this very rudimentary idea of what it would take to make a profitable product. I thought, well, you know, if you make a product for $10 and you sell it for $20, that's 50% profit. I was very fortunate, very early on, to meet someone who had had a product out in the market, and he explained to me that to have a product and a company successful in the kitchen cookware area, your cost of producing a good should be no more than a quarter of its selling price.

So I realized very early on that having something, a product that would fly in the market was going to hinge on me being able to produce it at an affordable price. I figured that the most I could probably charge for a friwall would be something on the order of $25, which meant that I needed to be able to produce it for not much more than $5. I went about looking for that in the U.S. and did not get very far. There weren't really companies that were,

that I found that were set up to do this kind of production for a consumer product. So I went about, try to find other solutions, and like a lot of folks in my situation, made my way to Asia, where I was able to find a wonderful partner at the time in Taiwan who had had a lot of experience in consumer products for the kitchen made out of silicone, and level expertise that was not available in the U.S. the reason that I was able to get a better price in Asia was not simply that labor costs were lower there. That was a part of the story, but that was a relatively small part of the story. What was more important was that the whole supply chain was there.

They had the expertise to be able to make the compression molds needed for this type of product. They had the factory equipment. They had the mold-making expertise. They had the supply. of silicone available from China and from Korea, and they had the people in the factories who knew how to combine all these elements in order to produce this product. In the U.S., that expertise and that supply chain simply didn't exist. Typically, around this time of the

year, I would be thinking about placing my order to Asia for inventory for the end of the year. Right now, those plans are kind of out the window because my supplier in China is no longer accessible to me because of the tariffs. Now, things are changing day to day. Three weeks ago, it seemed like I had no other option because I do have an alternate supplier in Taiwan, but just a little while ago, it looked like Taiwan was going to be almost as expensive as China. Now, all of a sudden, it's maybe a doable level with 10% tariffs. But can I act quickly enough to actually get my supply from Taiwan in time? The window of opportunity right now is only, three months after that tariffs on Taiwan may be going up again.

I don't know if I can react quickly enough, especially because my factory in Taiwan is getting really busy and may not have room for me. My top concern right now is that I may not be able to have product for the end of the year and so miss out on the most important season for Friwall economically. and the same turn, I'm afraid that if I order too much, I may be stuck. One of the things that people don't understand is that when a product is made in China, it's not as though the entire value is going over to a company in China. So think about the frywall.

Right now, on average, it sells for $25. The actual cost of the product for the physical product is about $5. That is what goes to China. the rest of that money, the other $20, goes to various companies and people in America. It goes to the Amazon warehouse workers. It goes to their delivery people. It goes to USPS who does the delivery for me. It goes to the software companies who help me run my website and rub my accounting and run my marketing.

And in the end, hopefully something is left for families and companies like mine. It seems like an awful shame to torch $20 of value just to get that last $5 of value back from China. At the same time, I've also been working over the last several months to launch a new product I'm really excited about, something that I think could be even bigger than the original friwall. But I'm paralyzed because it's going to be ready to ship in right around that 90-day window when tariffs are set.

to potentially rise again. And I don't know whether I should launch this product. I understand why the government would make exceptions for things like iPhones and computers, because I think that maybe those are slightly more necessary for people's lives than friwals and seeing the cost of your iPhone double would be a significant and, I think, clear hit to people.

But there's also an issue of fairness. I feel like Apple as a company is being spared, even though it has the capital to weather blows like this, but companies such as mine are being given zero relief. And also, unlike maybe companies that are better connected, are being given no visibility about what may be coming down the line in two or three months. If I could speak to Trump right now, what I would ask him is just not to forget companies like mine, if we're going to live in a world with tariffs, fine. That's really not for me or any of their small company to decide. But just give us a chance, give us some time to adjust.

Take these tariffs off for a span of six months. Let us get the inventory that we've already built and paid for out of China wherever it sits back home at the price that we'd forecast, and give us time to rebuild a supply chain elsewhere. Don't just hit us across the head and say, figure it out on your own. One of the things that I'm doing is talking a lot to fellow travelers and misery does like company. So there's a lot of commiserating going on for companies like mine. And I'm just trying to keep my head up to tell you the truth,

not to get too down, just to take things one day at a time. If you like this show, follow it on spot. Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Opinions is produced by Derek Arthur, Sophia Alvarez-Boid, Veshaka, Darba, Christina Samuelski, and Jillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin, Alison Brousack and Annie Rose Strasser. Engineering, mixing, and original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Sabro, and Afim Shapiro.

Additional music by Amon Sahota. The fact check team is. Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. Audience Strategy by Shannon Busta and Christina Samuelski. The executive producer of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser.