The Portland Democrat gets an earful about rising costs and unpredictable trade policy.
Addressing small business owners at a town hall this week in downtown Portland, Rep. Maxine Dexter set expectations low at the outset, saying she can’t force rational decision-making on Donald Trump.
“I think we all know I absolutely won’t be able to do that,” Dexter said. “But we can create other protection mechanisms. Because I will say, my Republican colleagues don’t like this anymore than we do. So we’ve got to figure out how to create some resilience in the system for our businesses and our economy.”
Business leaders from fields including construction, financial services, agriculture and logistics were gathered by the Portland Metro Chamber on Wednesday to describe for the congresswoman mounting challenges since President Donald Trump rolled out his “Liberation Day” tariffs in April — chief among them disrupted supply chains, climbing costs and panicked customers.
“There’s a nasty preconceived notion that Democrats don’t care about business,” Dexter said. “That is absolutely not the case, at least for me personally … Having the ability to launch a business, having an innovative place in a city that supports it, has to be core to our recovery.”
Chamber reps first painted the picture for Oregon, a trade-dependent state — one of only 11 with a trade surplus — and with the highest per capita number of small businesses in the country. And according to the chamber, the state’s small- and medium-sized businesses are highly involved in international trade, accounting for 88% of the state’s exports.
Katherine Lam, CEO of Bambuza Hospitality Group, said her company, which supplies restaurants in the Portland area, has been hit hard by tariff-related increases in the prices of ingredients and packaging. New duties — threatened and imposed — have already cost Bambuza several distributor deals that were in the works for more than a year, Lam said.
Twenty-year-old Bambuza has been able to shoulder some of the increased costs with vendors and partners. “But I’m not confident that will continue to be the case for us and eventually, these costs will translate to the consumer.”
“In the food industry, the margins are very low to begin with,” she said. “If this keeps up, everyone is at risk, not just small businesses like ours.”
Lam and others asked for predictable policies in addition to more help from the state and federal government. As it stands, tariffs change daily, business leaders said.
George Kepnick, co-owner of CustomComet, said he’s seen tariffs increase by more than 100% without warning. He was told by an official to look for tariff information on Truth Social, a social media site owned by the president.
Kepnick’s company specializes in promotional products like custom air fresheners and lapel pins, much of it made in China.
“We probably lost 6% of our net profit this year. Just paid it to tariffs. Lit it on fire,” Kepnick said. “It’s causing stress for our staff. Stress for our customers. Stress for our factories. But the main thing is just the uncertainty of it. And I guess we’re expected to watch Truth Social for updates, which is a little absurd.”
Nate McCoy of the National Association of Minority Contractors and the Black Business Association of Oregon said tariffs have raised prices on materials central to the building industry like lumber, steel and copper. And these items are central to more than just a company’s bottom line, he said.
“How are we going to meet our housing agenda? Our infrastructure agenda?” McCoy said. “We’ve learned that if we can’t buy [materials] at a good price, it’s probably not going to happen in today’s America.”
Kate Baumgartner of Travel Oregon told Dexter that Oregon’s tourism sector is bracing for 82,000 fewer international visitors this year and a resulting $51 million revenue decline. This has much to do with a steep dropoff of visitors from Canada, who represent around half of Oregon’s international tourists. (Though statewide data is not available, nationwide, Canadian tourism was down 26% in June.)
These declines will be difficult to recover from, Baumgartner said.
“Our forecasters anticipate that we won’t retain Canadian visitation to Oregon at levels that we saw in 2024 until 2030,” she added..
For all the talk of disruption and increased costs, imports at the Port of Portland actually increased in the first half of 2025, according to Jonathan Berndt, a customs broker and international logistics specialist. This is thought to be due in part to stockpiling ahead of tariff deadlines.
Berndt helps companies apply the cost of duties to their goods. With all tariffs, the pain is instantaneous — duties must be paid immediately upon a good’s entry to a country. Now, with tariffs increasing from 10% to 145% on every item entering the U.S., businesses have less available cash and greater uncertainty looking ahead.
“We don’t really think that the full impact of these tariffs have really been felt by our customer base yet. We think this next quarter will be the most telling,” he said. “But I will say the sentiment that everyone’s talking about is that uncertainty is absolutely causing havoc with our customers.”
Dexter won public office for the first time in 2020 with her election to the state House of Representatives. A medical doctor and pulmonary specialist, she treated patients with COVID-19 and was among the early voices pushing then-Gov. Kate Brown to close schools.
Last year, she ran to succeed Earl Blumenauer, a progressive Democrat who represented the Portland area in Congress for nearly three decades. She handled Susheela Jayapal in the Democratic primary and cruised to victory in the November general election.
Dexter said following Wednesday’s meeting she was alarmed to hear about the increased threat of fraud for small businesses, discussed in the meeting by an OnPoint Community Credit Union executive. And she was dismayed that businesses had so few resources to learn about tariff rates broken down by country and industry.
“There should be transparency and at least some reliable sources. This should be a solvable problem,” she told Oregon Business. “I’m not going to get Donald Trump to be predictable, but I can work to make sure that at least people have good information so they can make informed decisions.”
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