December 01, 2025 12:24 PM UTC

New Tariff Report Shows Massive Problems for Colorado Businesses

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• by: Colorado Pols

President Trump’s on-again, off-again tariff “policies” have been a regular subject in this space, with one example after another demonstrating the significant negative impacts on Colorado businesses.

As Judith Kohler reports for The Denver Post, a new state report on tariff impacts shows that things keep getting worse:

The overwhelming majority of Colorado businesses surveyed for a new state report on tariffs said the effects of the import taxes have been negative, with the financial impacts followed by the uncertainty created by changing trade policies cited as the biggest challenges.

The findings released on Nov. 21 are a follow-up to a report issued in September by the Colorado Office of State Planning and Budgeting. The latest look at the impacts of tariffs on Colorado businesses found that 86% of the businesses view the tariffs levied this year as challenges and only 14% see them as beneficial.

State agencies interviewed farmers and ranchers as well as businesses across several sectors: aerospace, construction, technology, retail, bioscience, energy and manufacturing. The report was coordinated among the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade, or OEDIT; the Colorado Department of Agriculture; and the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment.

This new report from the State of Colorado is clearly well-researched and organized, which is a lot of effort to reach a conclusion that seems obvious. This is necessary, unfortunately, in a media ecosystem in which Trump and his MAGA acolytes repeatedly claim that the cost of goods and services are actually going down — nevermind what your wallet and credit card balances tell you. According to a new Yahoo/YouGov poll, Americans are absolutely feeling higher prices…and blaming them on President Trump.

The report also reaffirms the biggest issue with the Trump Tariffs: Uncertainty. As any business leader will tell you, uncertainty makes it damn near impossible to plan for anything; if you don’t know what your costs will be a month from now, you can’t make reliable plans on inventory, staffing, and sales.

As Kohler continues for The Post:

The information from several recent interviews shows that businesses across Colorado are facing tough decisions, said Eve Lieberman, OEDIT executive director. She said business owners are considering whether to raise prices, take less salary, cut employees or whether they can even keep their doors open. [Pols emphasis]

“I talked to a company where the CEO was going to take one third of his salary and is also implementing a hiring freeze. He can’t even think about making future investments,” Lieberman said…

…Tariffs layered on top of higher costs for supplies and equipment and years of low prices for many commodities are fueling fears of more farm and ranch bankruptcies and foreclosures, said Kate Greenberg, Colorado agriculture commissioner.

“This is the time of year that producers are looking to the next growing season (and asking) ‘What are operating loans looking like. What are my markets going to be. Where do I have any certainty?’ The uncertainty that’s come with the tariff chaos out there has been incredibly difficult for that future planning,” Greenberg said.

Trump has often claimed that tariffs will boost domestic manufacturing, but it’s absurd to expect business leaders to launch a years-long and capital-intensive build-out of a new warehouse or factory when they can’t even reliably predict what the market will look like in three months.

Trump was re-elected last November in large part because he promised to lower prices for Americans. Results of the 2025 election made it clear that Americans believe Trump has actually made things worse.

The Trump Tariffs are causing massive damage to Colorado’s economy. The only way to avoid seeing it is to close your eyes.