The anxiety is palpable in East Atlanta Village, a tight-knit community of local storefronts in a city known for its entrepreneurialism and anchored by headquarters for Home Depot, UPS, Delta Air Lines and other major brands.
The district — just a few square blocks southeast of where I-20 meets bustling Moreland Avenue — draws a diverse crowd of young people to restaurants, late-night music venues, tattoo parlors and a newly opened comic book shop. Operators in the area are proud of their indie status; some grumbled when a national cookie chain opened in their midst a few years ago.
“Not all of us have been wiped out by Amazon and Walmart, you know,” said Park Pet Supply owner Victoria Park. “Main Street is still here.”
But Park and other local business owners said they’re still regaining their footing from inflation and now worry the trade war will make it harder to compete for increasingly value-conscious shoppers. Park Pet Supply sells about 6,500 items ranging from natural pet foods to grooming products and training accessories, many of which are sourced from Canada.
“One day we’re having tariffs, the next day we’re not having tariffs, and the next day we’re having tariffs. Then, ‘Oh no, we’re going to do 25% — no, we’re going to do 50%,’” she said. “That’s very, very hard for small businesses to navigate when you’re constantly changing things.”
If the customers can’t get what they want when they come here, they’re going to find it somewhere else.
Park said she bought $1,000 worth of backup stock from her Canadian suppliers in January, up from her usual $300 quarterly order, hoping to get ahead of Trump’s 25% tariffs on many goods from north of the border that took effect in March. She said she’s already seen price increases on more than 20 types of pet food, along with hikes on toys and collars, and fears having to shrink her assortment.
“If the customers can’t get what they want when they come here,” Park said, “they’re going to find it somewhere else,” like Chewy or PetSmart.
A White House spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Nearly a third of independent businesses in Georgia have already seen significant or moderate price increases from tariffs, according to a first-quarter survey of 700 such companies by the Atlanta-based nonprofit group Access to Capital for Entrepreneurs.
“Many of these small businesses, but not all, run on small margins in terms of cash flow,” said Martina Edwards, ACE’s president and CEO. “They are balancing between what you pass on to the consumer or not.”
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