That’s from one of the newest responses to our GSP expiration poll.  More than 75 percent of this small, Arizona-based company’s revenues come from products imported under GSP, so it has experienced across-the-board cost increases since GSP expired.

Often, the smallest businesses are hurt the most by expiration.  Take the company with less than 10 employees in Florida that has paid more than $100,000 in tariffs, which wrote: “Gross Margin ranges from 6-8%. Duties on products covered by GSP are higher. Essentially putting our business underwater. Without renewal business will be severely affected.”

Another small business in California wrote: “The timing couldn’t be worse with a weak dollar and inflationary prices on raw materials. My company was just starting to experience growth out of this recession when these three factors hit it hard all at once and crippled us.”

A small business in New Jersey writes: “This inaction is causing 2 problems. We have paid out over $18,000 in additional duties, making what should have been a slightly profitable year into a losing one and forcing us to cut plans to expand. Also the uncertainty of whether or not this will be signed again makes decision-making even more difficult.”

These costs don’t just affect individual businesses, they affect entire industries and the larger economy, as highlighted by this small company in New York:

“Unfortunately, our catalogs, like most companies in our industry, are already printed with prices that did not reflect these tremendous additional costs, because they were printed up at the end of last year, not knowing anything about the GSP situation. Therefore, we are facing a loss that we cannot reclaim unless the GSP is passed with a retroactive renewal date.

This country wants to boost our economy. Our government is relying heavily on the small business man. How are we supposed to get ahead and survive when the cards are already stacked against us???”

We posted similar comments both last week and the week before.  If you haven’t responded to the poll, you can do so by clicking here.