It's been more than a year since President Donald Trump administered tariffs across the globe.
One local small business tells us it's been difficult to navigate.
Literally, this month last year, we spoke with Orucase, a company that designs and manufactures travel cases and gear for cyclists.
Over the past year, the founder, Isaac Howe, says his business has lost hundreds of thousands of dollars due to tariffs, and the company is still feeling the effects.
The specific tariffs are on imports from Vietnam.
The company is still standing, but it has been jumping through hoops.
"A lot of changing course to try to navigate the complexities of the tariffs," Howe said. "I mean, at the end of the year, the total impact equated to about 15% of our revenue in 2025. So a significant, significant amount of money."
The founder said the percentage of the tariffs changed all the time, and that just added to the confusion.
Howe says if they raised the cost to their customers, they would've lost even more money due to most likely losing some business.
"At the end of the day, we had to keep our prices the same and eat the cost of the tariffs," he said.
It's not just the dollars that hurt the company.
"The real impacts from it are realized now," Howe said. "I mean, fortunately, we had the cash available to be able to fund that. I think we're navigating the complexity of that, the impact from that, really. Now, with the product launches that didn't happen last year. We're trying to do those now."
The tariff refund portal opened on Monday.
On Thursday. Nevada State Treasurer Zach Conine said that small businesses and families are the ones getting hit the hardest.
"If you're a big business and you've got a massive financial and accounting department, right, you're going to be able to apply to get those dollars back," he said.
Many small businesses do not have the same luxury.
"As a small business, there's just, you wear a lot of hats," Howe said. "And so as I was saying, I haven't had the capacity to really open that up and begin that process. I expect it's going to be a fairly complex thing to do."
Howe also says that the refund doesn't help them in the short term, as the company is already buying up all the products for the rest of the year.
However, he says he is looking forward to hopefully getting the money back.
