Bay Area cuisine thrives on global flavors. Trump’s trade war puts that at risk ...Middle East

OAKLAND CHINATOWN — It’s hardly been worth it for restaurants here to invest in menus. Stickers scrawled with handwritten prices are layered over laminated pages, each marking the crises of recent years — pandemic-era inflation and supply-chain issues, increases to California’s minimum wage, and now sweeping tariffs on Chinese goods.

Restaurant owners are holding their breath as they wait to see whether President Donald Trump doubles down on his trade war, or pulls back. The outcome is personal — high tariffs could cut further into the restaurants’ already thin margins, threatening their livelihood. 

So far, the tariffs have been unpredictable. In April, Trump placed import taxes ranging from 11% to 51% on 57 other countries. Then, just a few hours after they went into effect, Trump reversed course, saying that the country-specific tariffs would be suspended for 90 days to allow him to negotiate with trade partners. But he left one major tariff in place — a 145% duty, applying only to China.

“It’s all we’re talking about all day,” said Charles Hong, the second-generation owner of the well-known Shandong Restaurant, in an interview in Mandarin. “The impact really depends, though — our president changes his mind all the time.”

He just did again. During a White House press conference Tuesday, Trump said the tariffs for China would “come down substantially, but it won’t be zero.”

For Bay Area restaurants and markets that depend on imports, the uncertainty is a source of daily headaches.

Hong, for example, sources several ingredients directly from China — black fungus, bamboo shoots, crushed red chili peppers. He worries that many of them may soon be in short supply — his importer told him that shipments have stopped as they wait to see how the trade war plays out. (No importer wants their shipping container to arrive on U.S. soil just before a reversal goes into effect.)

“We’re holding onto the inventory we have,” Hong said. “Eventually, some items will run out.” When that happens, he’ll have to take certain dishes off the menu, like the black fungus and snow peas, or the stir-fried beef and bamboo shoots.

Some businesses don’t have the luxury of waiting for Trump to change his mind.

Ali Roth, owner of the Blue Willow tea house in Berkeley, was a few days out from leaving on her annual trip to China for the spring tea harvest — when she typically buys 80% of her entire inventory for the year. Then Trump announced the tariffs.

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“I have to spend all my money on inventory right now, and it happens to coincide with a trade war,” Roth said over the phone from Guizhou, where she has been visiting local tea farms. “The most stressful part is that things can change at any moment based on the mood of one insane person.”

Trump has explained the motivations for his trade war as restoring domestic production to America. But many agricultural products, like most tea — which needs a humid, subtropical climate — can’t be replicated here.

Even if Roth sources more tea from Japan, she would still face a 24% tariff there, per the rates announced by Trump before the pause. Her matcha, typically $50 a pound, would increase to $62 a pound.

“I’m hoping I won’t have to raise prices — I don’t want to feed into the inflation,” Rolf said. For now, she’s focusing on stocking fewer teas, but ones that she knows are popular enough to sell.

“I may have fewer specialty teas, even if they’re dear to me — because I need to have teas I know I can sell somewhat fast,” she said.

Tom Kumamaru, 72, owner of Shuei-Do Manju Shop In San Jose’s Japantown is facing a similar dilemma. His sweet, flaky manju buns are filled with Japanese azuki beans that are hard to find in the United States.

He anticipates that his suppliers will raise prices with his next orders. “If they start raising the prices, of course I’m going to have to raise my price,” he said. “That’s the only thing we could do, because we have a slim profit margin.”

If Trump’s tariffs raise prices as so many economists have predicted, small bakeries like his could be hard hit. Desserts and confectionaries are some of the first things shoppers give up when their disposable income is slashed.

“It’s going to get harder,” Kumamaru said. “If the tariff war keeps going on like it is, then you don’t know what the end’s going to be.”

Costs are going up for more than just food. Danny Huang, 43, said that take-out and deliveries make up a major chunk of his sales at Hunan Taste in San Jose. “Many packaging materials, such as takeout boxes and bags, are sourced from China,” he said. “Their prices have also gone up, or will soon,”

It’s not just Asian purveyors feeling the hurt.

Eli’s Produce Market in San Jose opened last July, and owners Beatriz Basañez Garcia and her husband have stocked the shelves with products from around the world – goods from Russia and Poland, Latino products and avocados and jalapenos from Mexico. They, too, say they could be forced to raise prices, but are waiting to hear back from their suppliers.

“There is nothing we can do if the vendors raise the prices,” Basañez Garcia said.

Basañez Garcia said that the big chains already get better prices because they buy products by the truckload, while Eli’s Produce Market buys by the box, and she thinks the tariffs have the potential to hurt small businesses even more.

“I can’t compete with that,” she said. “It’s super scary.”

Roth, the tea shop owner, is confused about whether to take Trump’s tariffs seriously or not, especially when they’ve been so on-again, off-again.

“It feels like a lot of people are stressed out and suffering for no real reason,” Roth said. “A lot of small businesses are going to be severely impacted at a time when we already can’t afford to exist.”

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