The Small-Business Survival Struggle

in 2020, I launched Good Juju, a small home-and-body-care business, with my partner, Alexa Monahan. We started with shampoo and conditioner bars, then moved into laundry detergent strips, thin PVA sheets that we had manufactured in China. Each pack saved one plastic bottle from the landfill. Customers developed an almost cult-like devotion to our products. And we did it all remotely: Alexa is in Vancouver and I’m in Toronto.

Within our first two years, we expanded into stores like Indigo and London Drugs, and we hired two employees—one full-timer and one part-timer. By the end of 2022, we broke into American retail: we landed deals with Grove Collaborative and Thrive Market, two major U.S. e-commerce platforms. Our online business was soon flourishing, and 500 stores were selling our products across North America. Our goal to move enough product to eliminate 50 million plastic bottles by 2030 seemed not only realistic, but inevitable. Then Trump got elected. Again.

Related: Faces of the Trade War

Alexa is the pragmatist of the two of us—I deal with issues as they arise. She’d seen danger coming since Trump’s campaign-trail promises to institute tariffs and bring manufacturing back to America. I, on the other hand, was convinced it was one big bluff, with financial implications so extreme and far-reaching that they bordered on absurd. Surely common sense—or actual adults in the room—would prevail. That denial is probably why I found myself in a panic after last February’s announcement: 25 per cent tariffs on most Canadian imports and 10 per cent on Chinese ones? Taking effect within four days? For Good Juju, this was catastrophic.

Alexa and I scrambled to address two crises at once—the first being the hit to our Canadian-made bars. We initially got a brief reprieve: Trump delayed implementation to March of 2025 and announced an exemption under the Canada–United States–Mexico Agreement, or CUSMA, for Canadian-origin goods. The problem was we had to obtain certificates of origin for each Good Juju product sold. We paused U.S. shipping for three weeks just to gather all the necessary documentation.

The second issue was more serious: the 10 per cent tariffs on items manufactured in China, like our laundry strips. They represented 60 per cent of our revenue, and over a third of their sales came from the U.S. To make matters worse, Trump eliminated the de minimis exemption for Chinese goods—a policy that allowed product shipments valued under US$800 to enter the U.S. duty-free.  

The trade-war rollercoaster is almost comical in retrospect: tariffs on China ballooned to 54 per cent, then 104 per cent, then 145 per cent before dropping to 30 per cent last May. Alexa and I spent seven hours each day tracking the constantly shifting rules and emailing American customers to apologize for their orders getting stuck at the border with no clear ETA. At the peak, we were covering nearly $22 in tariffs on $15 packs of strips. Eventually, we stopped shipments of them—our best-selling product—to the U.S. entirely last summer. The move cost us 1,500 customers and $450,000 in revenue in just three months’ time.

Of course, financial burdens haven’t been ours alone to bear. Exports to the U.S. plunged by almost 16 per cent in April of 2025 alone. And, according to a Canadian Federation of Independent Business survey from last August, close to one in five small-business owners said they wouldn’t last more than six months if the tariffs remained; nearly four in 10 say they wouldn’t last a year. A third of small- and medium-sized companies have already moved away from U.S. suppliers or customers, with many considering shifting sales to Europe or Mexico.

For many small Canadian businesses, however, leaving the U.S. isn’t so easy. Some have no choice but to continue shipping south to keep inventory moving and service debt. Purely from a growth perspective, access to the American market is critical for Canadian companies. It’s much bigger, and our customers there are more alike than different: ads that run in Canada typically resonate in the U.S., too. Any small business that pivots to Europe would have to retool everything for those new markets—including advertising—which costs money they may not have. As a result, I’ve watched solo founders who can’t pause shipments juggle family life, work operations and insane tariff-compliance paperwork for months, only to get bludgeoned by astronomical duties or be wiped out altogether. It’s heartbreaking.

In Good Juju’s case, we have nine employees—more staff than most small businesses. We considered laying off a few of our warehouse workers, but we managed to avoid it; for a while, our lost U.S. sales were more than offset by the Buy Canadian boost. Still, that’s not a long-term growth plan. In our industry, Canada can sustain a $30-million business—perhaps—but if you want to reach revenues of $100 million, you need America. Good Juju needs them in particular. Alexa and I took on several bank loans to get us off the ground—funds for inventory, payroll and marketing. We couldn’t shut down even if we wanted to. 

I figured we’d more or less ride things out until Trump left office in 2029, but now there’s talk that he might try to seek a third term. The old me would’ve said that was impossible—but I also once thought that about 145 per cent tariffs. We can’t wait for things to magically stabilize in the U.S., so Alexa and I are expanding our Canadian presence as much as possible. In February, we’re launching new products that target hair loss and shedding—both major concerns for consumers. We’re also ramping up digital marketing to build more brand awareness across the country.

The big wild card, however, is CUSMA, which is up for review in 2026. Everything we’ve seen so far makes me worry that talks won’t go in Canada’s favour, so Alexa and I have been running through strategies for the worst-case scenario. If Good Juju’s current CUSMA-compliant products lose their exemption status, would we ask American retailers to absorb the new tariffs, or just take the hit ourselves? We haven’t decided yet. 

We’ve also explored the possibility of moving production of our laundry strips out of China, but that’s no simple task. We know of one Canadian manufacturer that could make them here at home, but the costs to our company would quadruple, ultimately rendering our strips prohibitively expensive for consumers. Pulling out of the States for good has crossed our minds, but it would depend on how severe the CUSMA tariffs end up being. If they’re 10 per cent, we could probably ride things out. Any higher, and we’d have serious problems.

For now, we’re locked in a holding pattern: watching and wishing that the next round of trade negotiations doesn’t upend what little stability Good Juju has left. You can’t run a small business in 2026 without some level of delusion. The financial hits and whiplash-inducing headlines come at you daily, weekly, yearly—and it’s enough to break you if you don’t develop a protective layer of optimism. But despite everything, I still believe Alexa and I will figure this out. We’ll pivot. We’ll adapt. And we’ll keep the faith, because, at this point, it’s the only thing getting me out of bed in the morning.