Ever since the president’s so-called “liberation day” in early April, businesses all over the country have been trying to figure out how to deal with the added cost of the Trump administration’s tariffs.

Some of them are simply passing the import tax on to their customers in the form of higher prices; others are absorbing the cost themselves. And a lot of them are mixing both approaches.

Wherever a business lands on how to deal with tariffs, its choices are likely to involve a whole lot of haggling with other businesses along every step of the supply chain. Those negotiations aren’t always pretty.

A few weeks ago, Ken Giddon went to a trade show to order some suits to sell in spring 2026 at the men’s clothing stores he runs in New York called Rothmans. When he was there, he met with an importer who’s supplying some of Giddon’s merchandise for this fall from Italy.

“The guy said, ‘Oh, by the way, the fall stuff is 5% more,’” he said.

Giddon booked these suits months ago, and already agreed on a price. “So the debate is: Do we stick to an agreed-upon price that we agreed upon 6 months ago, or do we consent to the higher prices that were added on because of the tariffs?”

Giddon said he really doesn’t want to have to pay those higher prices. He doesn’t want to have to charge his customers more. He’s also not sure whether that 5% bump is fair, since he doesn’t know how much his supplier is paying for those suits — or in tariffs.

“And so the negotiations are intricate, because we don’t really know the other side’s position,” he said. “And that makes it complicated, and sometimes contentious.”

If Giddon can’t bargain down that tariff charge, he said he might walk away. “And hopefully it won’t be a permanent end, but it’ll be a season we’ll take off with these guys.”

It’s not easy being on either side of these negotiations.

“I think I had a solid week where every client that I dealt with was very upset,” said Cathrine Reynolds, a designer and importer for Palmetto Tile Distributors in Columbia, South Carolina.

Many of the tile suppliers Reynolds orders from for her clients have been making her pay tariff surcharges — and she said she has no choice but to pass those along.

“We can’t absorb the difference there, that’s not sustainable, so we’ve got to maintain our margins as well,” Reynolds said. “We know what it costs to run the business.”

Reynolds said she’s started baking the cost of tariffs into her base prices. “Then, they don’t see that separate line item, and it doesn’t feel like a slap in the face, so to speak, or that they’re being nickeled and dimed.”

So far, she said that’s has gone over a lot better than hitting customers with a separate tariff charge.

“It’s just for some reason, when they see that ‘T-word’, it just kind of sets them off a little bit,” she said.

Other businesses are taking the opposite approach and embracing tariffs in their negotiations with customers.

“You’ve got to use the word ‘tariffs,’” said Richard Leao, the owner and CEO of Norman Wright Mechanical Equipment Company, which sells HVAC equipment to contractors. “You can put ‘surcharge’ after it, but if you don’t have the word ‘tariffs,’ you’re going to have a really hard time getting any more money from anybody.”

Leao said his strategy is to be as transparent about tariffs as possible. That’s because — at this point — he said his customers should expect them.

“What we’re saying is, ‘Hey, just turn on any TV station, you’re seeing it. It’s not something we’re making up, the manufacturer’s making up. It’s real’,” he said.

But Leao’s company is selective about passing along the cost of tariffs. It only does it when they’re really steep — think 20% or 30%. Otherwise, he’ll likely just eat the cost.

“If it’s a good customer, we’ll say, ‘Look, we’re just going to take care of it, but moving forward, we’re going to have to charge you for it,’” Leao said. “So it really depends on the relationship we have with the customer, how much they buy from us.”

Leao added that, if it’s a good customer, a dispute over tariffs just isn’t worth it.