It’s been a doozy of a day in the world of business and business news: Over the weekend, President Donald Trump announced he’d be moving forward with tariffs: 25% on all imports from Mexico and Canada, and 10% on imports from China, starting tomorrow. Then today, Mexico and the U.S. struck a deal to delay those tariffs for one month as the two negotiate border security.

Honestly, with all this whiplash, by the time you read this story, or hear it on your local station these details may have already changed again. Which brings us to the one constant in all of this: uncertainty. Uncertainty for importers, businesses and also for you, the consumer.

It’s one of those shot-out-of-a-cannon type of Mondays for Lance Ficken at Savor Imports. He’s been in meetings with lawyers and managers since 6 a.m. and tracking every update from the White House. 

“Watching the news and trying to figure out what we have going on in terms of imports on the water right now and how we’re going to adjust quickly,” he said.

The company imports about 400 products from over 30 countries, including quinoa from Canada, jalapeños from Mexico and edamame from China. Ficken has been preparing for tariffs — he’s actually in the middle of an edamame experiment right now, testing to see if the crop grows well in Guatemala.

“It’ll take four to six months. It’s not a quick solve, but it’s a solve long term,” he said.

Short term? Ficken is kind of at a standstill. He doesn’t want to blow up his supply chains or raise prices until he knows what’s going on.

Peter Debaere, an international economist at the University of Virginia, said this is likely just the beginning of back and forth tariffs with other countries.

“Are they going to retaliate? How long is this going to take? So this is all not so clear,” he said.

Debaere said companies prefer to raise prices once instead of every time the wind shifts. Remember, during Trump’s last term, it took the U.S. and China two years to reach a Phase One Trade Agreement. So businesses will wait. 

“You probably want to see how far this goes,” he said.

It means tariffs could take a while to hit goods that have a lot of complicated parts and components, like appliances and cars. But some commodities have already started pricing in. 

Luis Ribera, an agricultural economist at Texas A&M, said wholesale avocado prices were up this morning.

“Prices and markets react to information. So nothing even had to happen. It’s just the threat of something to happen and the prices are going to jump,” he said.

That doesn’t mean your avocado toast will be suddenly more expensive. But it does mean everyone, from importers to grocers to restaurants, is holding their breath.