Vendors and attendees at the Northwest Food Show, a trade show for restaurant owners, caterers and other food service providers, responded mostly the same way Sunday to questions about how President Donald Trump’s various tariffs on foreign goods would affect them: They have no idea.
“It’s a whipsaw,” said Marc Cohen, the director of sales for San-J, a maker of Asian sauces based in Virginia. “(Tariffs) are here one day, gone the next. It makes me wonder if they’ll have staying power.”
Many attendees and vendors approached in the long rows of smoothie blenders, chef’s knives, cheese, flatware and industrial strength fire extinguishers preferred not to have their names in the news. But they all said the uncertainty of the moment was wearisome, especially so soon after COVID-19.
The uncertainty, which is affecting a range of Oregon businesses, is driven by the Trump administration’s imposition of broad tariffs and then the rescinding of them, with a promise of bringing them back in a few months. That pause leaves businesses unsure about long-term outlooks.
The show at the Portland Expo Center has been around for 55 years and draws vendors from across the country along with buyers and food service folks from Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Northern California, according to the Oregon Restaurant and Lodging Association, which puts on the event.
The idea is to bring suppliers of everything from chef’s clothing to a “Blaze Haze Eliminator,” meant to remove the smell of marijuana from fabric, together in one place. Attendees hoping to make connections with vendors or track trends are the owners of small coffee shops, regional pizza joints and institutional food services, including those at universities and prisons.
Tariffs, said Jason Brandt, president and CEO of the Oregon Restaurant and Lodging Association, are not good for business.
“We believe restaurants will be among the first hit with the cost escalations of food from the tariffs on imports,” Brandt told The Oregonian/OregonLive. “Our industry is still recovering from the pandemic. Any cost escalation is very difficult to absorb.”
How much and even whether costs might escalate is unknown. As of Friday, Trump backed down on several proposed tariffs, but left in place a base tariff of 10% on most countries. Many products from Canada and Mexico not covered by a prior free trade deal still carried a 25% tariff. And an 145% tariff on products from China remained in place, with bigger food industry implications for packaging and industrial machined parts than for actual foodstuffs.
Walt Garnett, an assistant manager at the Mo’s Seafood and Chowder in Cannon Beach, said he wasn’t sure he was best positioned to talk about how the uncertainty has affected his company, a coastal Oregon mainstay since 1946.
“But I know we’re worried about it,” he said. “Suppliers are very confused.”
Garnett said he was at the show in part to look for local suppliers that may sell more expensive goods, but are not subject to tariffs. He said the effects he’s noticed so far have been scattershot. A gift shop supplier called this week to say it was raising its prices on everything as of May 1, for example. And he’s found himself asking more questions about where ingredients come from. But so far most costs haven’t changed and he hasn’t seen a big shift in how many people are coming to eat at Mo’s.
A seafood wholesaler, Brent Fraser at Sea Watch International, said their catch was wholly domestic and he didn’t expect to be assessed for tariffs on his company’s goods. In fact, he thought it might be good for them if purchasers such as Garnett and the much larger buyers for big food service providers decided to buy from Sea Watch rather than their less expensive competitors from other countries.
“I can see where it would be a positive for us,” he said. “But I can also see where it could hurt the industry if people don’t have the product.”
The uncertainty itself may be the most insidious result of the back and forth on tariffs so far, according to a few attendees who asked not to be named.
Raju Chuganey, who sells smoothie mixes and leases industrial smoothie makers for Kerry, a food service conglomerate, said several of his customers in Oregon, Washington and Idaho had paused taking on new leases or investing in larger product orders, citing the uncertainty in the markets.
“There’s a hesitance to make changes,” he said. “That seems to be a growing sense — I’ve heard that across the region.”