I was sitting on my couch, coffee in hand, watching CBS Sunday Morning—that soft, thoughtful show that reminds us the world isn’t all bad—when this story hit me square in the gut.
Beth Benike.
Veteran. Mom. Small business owner. Fighter.
And now, thanks to a 145% Trump tariff on Chinese imports, she’s sitting on her kitchen floor, crying, because the country she served is about to take everything she built.
Beth did her time in Bosnia, Kuwait, Iraq.
Came home and started Busy Baby, a company making baby placemats and utensils.
She fought tooth and nail to get her products into Target and Walmart—a dream for any small business owner.
And then? Tariffs blindsided her.
All her products are made in China. Why? Because that’s where the manufacturing base is for baby goods. She doesn’t have the clout—or the capital—to suddenly swap to U.S. factories.
And now she’s looking at a $230,000 tariff bill just to get her own products into the country she fought for.
Can she afford it?
“Oh God, no.”
That’s what she told CBS.
And it wasn’t staged drama—it was real, raw, and heart-wrenching.
Her loan? Partially backed by the Small Business Administration and her own house.
If she can’t sell the product sitting at the factory? She loses both.
Meanwhile, the TV pundits cheer the tariffs as a win for America.
Win? Tell that to Beth’s empty warehouse.
Tell that to her eight-year-old son who saw his mom in tears on the kitchen floor.
Beth’s not a charity case. She’s an example of how these tariffs—sold to the public as tough-on-China—are hammering American small businesses while the big box stores and corporate giants skate right through.
They’ll pass the costs onto the rest of us.
Beth? She’s got nothing left to pass along but heartbreak.
This isn’t how you protect American jobs.
This is how you gut them.
With a pen stroke, a tariff, and a bunch of speeches while the Beth Benikes of America bleed out on the kitchen floor.
She has started a GoFundMe just to keep her business open.