This holiday season, tariffs are threatening the survival of a small Christmas supply business outside of Salt Lake City.
Jared and Dawnita Hendricks have owned Village Lighting for 23 years, selling and distributing a variety of Christmas products to big box stores and directly to consumers online. The company currently employs 15 people.
But when Village Lighting’s 2025 holiday season garlands, wreaths, lights and decor arrived by ship at U.S. ports from Asia in recent months, many of them carried additional tariff costs of up to 50% per item.
These added fees are the result of President Donald Trump’s far-reaching tariff agenda, which has raised U.S. import duties to levels not seen in over a century.
The Trump administration claims tariffs will boost the U.S. economy in part by forcing manufacturers to move operations to the United States, and further by forcing U.S. trade partners to make concessions.
But these global economic forces feel very far away from West Valley City, Utah, where tariff costs at Village Lighting are outpacing the company’s expected profit margins.
“The tariff costs in and of themselves are not sustainable, and I don’t believe we can raise the cost enough to the consumers to be profitable,” Jared Hendricks told NBC News during an interview at his warehouse in Utah.
It’s an issue plaguing the entire Christmas decor industry, which for decades has relied on goods imported from Asia.
American small businesses importing holiday decor this year have already spent more than $400 million on tariff fees, according to an estimate from a coalition of small businesses called “We Pay the Tariffs,” which counts Village Lighting among its members.
Compared to the roughly $26 million these same companies paid in tariffs last year, that’s an increase of at least 1,438%.
Across the United States, companies of all sizes have tried to time their overseas orders in the hopes of avoiding the worst tariff fees.
But for Village Lighting, which orders inventory up to a year in advance, this wasn’t an option.
After enjoying one of the company’s most successful years ever in 2024, the Hendrickses decided to order extra inventory this year, a process that began last December and was completed by February.
So when Trump announced sweeping tariffs on nearly all U.S. trading partners in early April, it was too late for the Hendrickses to cut back their orders, which were already loaded on container ships by the time the tariffs took effect.
In an effort to keep their prices as low as possible, the Hendrickses have opted to absorb the majority of the added tariff costs.
So far, that has cost them nearly $750,000 and counting. Tariffs are withdrawn directly from the couple’s bank account 30 days after each product arrives at a U.S. port.
Their goal is to keep any retail price hikes under 5% this Christmas season.
But the only way to do that, said Jared, was by “leveraging everything,” including their home, with a line of credit.
“We went from working towards a profit to working for tariffs,” said Jared. “It’s affected our home life, our health. It has been the most stressful, difficult, challenging year of 23 years of businesses that we ever had.”
This isn’t the first time Village Lighting has had to contend with abrupt changes to tariff rates.
During the first Trump administration, average U.S. tariff rates on Chinese imports swelled to around 20%, up from a simple tariff rate of just 2.8% in 2015.
The Hendrickses responded at the time by attempting to diversify their supply chain across several Southeast Asian countries, including Indonesia, Cambodia and Malaysia.
But these countries were all hit with high tariffs in early April of this year, swept up in Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs.
At that point, said Jared, all his planning “went out the window.”
Moving Village Lighting’s manufacturing operations to the United States would be nearly impossible, the Hendrickses say, because of the type of complex machinery and skilled labor that are required to make the Christmas goods they sell.
“A dozen different factories go into one wreath or garland,” Jared said. “It’s not a matter of me opening up one factory. It’s a matter of me opening up two dozen factories and somehow providing a pathway to get raw materials.”
He said that it was unlikely “that anyone in our situation could ever financially find a way to make that happen.”
The Hendrickses are not alone in feeling the sting of tariffs this holiday season. Consumers are dealing with it, too.
According to a recent survey from the National Retail Federation, 85% of shoppers expect to pay more this year because of tariffs.
And they’re right — Lending Tree, an online lending marketplace, found that tariffs will cost the average American an additional $132 on their holiday expenses this year. Goldman Sachs estimates that consumers are picking up as much as 55% of overall tariff costs.
The Hendrickses said they feel like small businesses are bearing the brunt of Trump’s tariff pains.
“When there was Covid, it felt like the whole country was kind of in it together,” said Dawnita Hendricks. “This kind of feels like it’s just us against the failure of our business, because of something we cannot control.”
That lack of control is clouding Village Lighting’s future.
“After 23 years, you kind of start thinking about, What’s the second half of my life going to look like?” said Jared.
“Are we going to be able to move to the next level so that we can retire and enjoy our grandchildren and whatever?”
Tariffs, he said, “really just put a halt to that and made us question, ‘What’s next?’”
Maya Huter is an associate producer at NBC News covering business and the economy.
Christine Romans is the senior business correspondent at NBC News.