SAVANNAH, Ga. () — Numerous individuals are concerned about rising prices and costs resulting from tariffs, including many local entrepreneurs. On Thursday morning, Savannah’s Downtown Business Association organized a tariff discussion featuring industry leaders and experts to explore strategies for coping with this unpredictability.
“There’s significant uncertainty in the market, be it for small businesses or large corporations,” stated Michael Toma, an Economic Professor at Georgia Southern.
Uncertainty was a recurring theme during the discussions with Savannah business owners, who are grappling with how to develop an effective response plan.
“You have to think about where you might be able to cut some expenditures, right? Because right now there’s a new line on the expense sheet and the expense. And that has to do with the tariffs that, while we have now ramped down from where we were, say, two weeks ago or three weeks ago, now, we are looking at a baseline tariff rate of 10 percent, which is four times the rate that we used to look at in 2024,” Toma explained.
From questions about bank loans and borrowing power to pushing tariffs onto the consumer, Toma says businesses should wait 6 to 9 months so there’s more information on how to move forward.
“We don’t know how the tariff policy and the conversations with our trading partners are going to play out over the next six months or so. So, what we saw from first quarter economic data is that a lot of businesses in our nationwide basis are positioning themselves defensively to try and ride things out for the next six months. So, think about that as kind of a pivot point in the future. Maybe 6 to 9 months from now, we’ll know a lot more about where we stand with respect to our trading partners and our tariff policies,” Toma stated.
Toma adds that while prices may rise, one thing people likely don’t have to worry about is mass layoffs as the unemployment rate remains low.
