NPR’s Michel Martin speaks with the chief executive of a Minnesota baby products manufacturer about her experience applying for a refund from President Trump’s tariffs.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Another CEO waiting to get her money back is Beth Benike. Her company, Busy Baby, makes products to deal with the fact that babies like to drop stuff on the floor. We’ve been checking in with her over the last year to see how the tariffs have affected her business. Here is what she told us last May about scrambling to deal with changing tariffs on products made in China.
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BETH BENIKE: It was like, now we’re a lost cause. And our products were ready to ship, so I quickly called the factory and said, cancel the booking. There’s no way we can come up with that kind of money in a month. And then it went up even higher, and that’s when I hit the floor and just cried.
MARTIN: Beth, sorry to bring up that painful moment, but welcome back. How have you been doing?
BENIKE: Oh, my gosh. That sound clip just made me want to cry again. I’m hanging in there. I’m hanging by a thread, but I’m hanging in there.
MARTIN: So we heard you left product in China because the tariffs were too high. How much did you wind up paying that you’re hoping to get back?
BENIKE: I paid about $50,000 over the course of the last year that I expect to get back, but the damage is way beyond that. You know, because I had to leave my inventory, I ran out of inventory here to sell, and I probably have $500,000 in lost revenue.
MARTIN: Oh, my goodness. So what steps have you taken so far to make sure you get the refund you’ve got coming? I’m really wondering how this is working for somebody like you who doesn’t have, like, a whole flotilla of lawyers and accountants to do all this paperwork for you. What’s it…
BENIKE: Yeah.
MARTIN: What’s the process like?
BENIKE: Yeah. I mean, the process at face value seems quite easy. You log into the Customs website. You sign up for an account on their ACE data portal. And then once you have an account there, you set up these sub-accounts, and one of them is an importer account where you enter your bank’s information. From there, I should be able to pull in my entries, create a spreadsheet that I would then upload today.
The problem for me is that importing is much more complicated than just kind of surface-level. And my importer account already exists, but is attached to a previous broker. So you can import things yourself. You can use a freight forwarder. You can use a broker. And even though it’s imported under me, my company, it’s attached to the broker. So I can’t actually fill out the paperwork and submit the paperwork I need to submit until someone at Customs kind of switches that file over to my account.
MARTIN: Wow. So they’re saying you should get the money back in 60 to 90 days, plus interest. I think what I hear you saying is you don’t think that’s realistic.
BENIKE: I think it’s realistic for those who can set up their accounts easily. I’ve been trying to set up this account for over a month now. I was on hold with Customs for four hours – yeah – on Thursday last week, and nobody picked up the phone. Like, I physically need them to work out a little glitch that’s on their end, and I can’t get a human to help me do that.
MARTIN: Wow. So is there any – I don’t know what you do about that. Like, what do you do about that? I just…
BENIKE: Well, I keep calling.
MARTIN: Yeah. I just…
BENIKE: I keep calling. I’ve – yeah. I’ve submitted tickets. I’ve done the emails. I’ve – the website’s very cumbersome. There’s a lot of pages. It’s not super intuitive. So I’ve now begun just reaching out to every email address I can find with the case information and my data and anything they need to make the fix. But I’m afraid now that this is starting today, more people are going to be on the website. More people are going to be encountering similar issues. And now that hold time is going to be…
MARTIN: Even longer.
BENIKE: You know, who knows how long?
MARTIN: Before we let you go, let’s hope you do get that money. Fingers crossed. Will…
BENIKE: Yeah.
MARTIN: …That alleviate at least some of the financial pressure you’ve been facing?
BENIKE: It’s going to help me get out of some of the debt that I acquired while I was out of stock this summer. It’s going to – of course, it’s going to help. Yeah.
MARTIN: But the time you spend getting this money back, you’re not designing new products, etc., etc. It’s…
BENIKE: Oh, no.
MARTIN: …Time-consuming.
BENIKE: And I’ve had to let employees go, and because of that, I have way more work on my own plate. So I really don’t have time to be doing this at all.
MARTIN: That’s Beth Benike. She’s the CEO of Busy Baby. Beth, thanks so much for joining us once again.
BENIKE: Yeah.
MARTIN: Hoping you – wishing you the best.
BENIKE: Thank you.
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