They sell party supplies on Amazon, new tariffs threaten their future

When President Donald Trump announced tariffs this month on goods from all over the world, Jing and Eddie Levine, who sell party supplies on Amazon, were on a flight home to Chicago after visiting suppliers in Asia.

Amazon was the center of their life. They met at a conference for Amazon sellers in 2016 and had their first kiss at another Amazon conference two years later. They moved in together and grew their business, Treasures Gifted. When they married in 2022, they threw an Amazon-themed wedding, with guests assigned Amazon product numbers instead of table numbers.

The Levines tried to make sense of the news. The giant poster that Trump pointed to during a Rose Garden ceremony on April 2 showed that China would be hit with large tariffs, but so would every country they had just visited — and almost every country on the planet, for that matter.

“Thank God the Wi-Fi on the plane was not bad this time,” Eddie Levine said, “because I would have had a heart attack.”

The balloons, plates and decorations that the Levines import are just a speck in the trillions of dollars in goods that swirl around the globe. A week after Trump announced his so-called reciprocal tariffs, he pulled them back for most countries for at least 90 days, while sending tariffs on China even higher.

Countries or major companies may be able to lobby the president for a break, as he seemed to give Apple and other electronics makers over the weekend. But the best the Levines of the world can do is wait for news updates and hope their plans haven’t been shredded by Trump’s vision for unraveling decades of global trade. And like thousands of other small-business owners who sell online, the Levines are struggling to adapt to an e-commerce system that let them tap into international markets but that is now on the verge of falling apart.

More than 60% of all items sold on Amazon are offered by third-party sellers. By some estimates, most of the largest are based in China, though there are still thousands of small and medium-size sellers in the United States. Many companies are in the middle of forecasting demand for the holiday shopping season. “You are pretty much placing the orders to your factories right now,” said Guru Hariharan, who advises major brands at his company, CommerceIQ. Even with the 90-day pause for countries besides China, planning for Christmas is a crapshoot because many orders would ship after that window, if businesses can snag space on a container ship.

Some sellers have received emails from Amazon asking them to share if they plan to shift suppliers or raise prices, but the Levines have not heard anything.

The Levines, both 36, import their products from Asia — many from China, and the rest from other countries they have declined to name in order to avoid tipping off competitors. If wide-ranging tariffs persist, they plan to raise prices, they said. Finding domestic sources is not simple because U.S. manufacturers don’t cater to the small custom orders they need, the couple added.

Billions of paper plates — crucial to a party-supply business — are produced in the United States each year in automated factories. But the Levines say they don’t need the generic plates American suppliers produce.

The couple primarily run the business from their apartment, and they have four full-time employees, including Jing Levine’s parents, at their warehouse in the Chicago suburbs. Levine started the e-commerce business in 2013 and eventually settled on selling party supplies, because she thought they had potential to expand to a variety of products — balloons, napkins, plates, photo backdrops, plastic cupcake toppers.

They sell hundreds of thousands of items a year, often around certain themes. Some are based on characters they license, like a princess-y “Once Upon a Time” design featuring Peppa Pig. Others they design on their own, like friendly dinosaurs with pink bows for a child’s birthday, or a “touchdown” set for the Super Bowl.

The Levines knew tariffs were coming, but did not expect them to be so rapid, so large and so widespread.

A week after the tariffs were announced, Levine spent an hour on the phone with a manufacturer. They discussed canceling production of the last items needed to fill a container in China that was almost ready to go, and delaying another filled with paper plates from elsewhere in Asia.

“We ended the call with ‘Let’s check in again the next morning,'” she said.

About an hour later, Jing Levine sent Eddie Levine a screenshot of a CNN headline: “Trump orders 90-day pause on new tariffs except for China.”

“Yayy,” she texted. “We get one last meal before getting on the electric chair.”