A Case Study from The Gentle Roller Company

How Donald Trump Is Destroying Small Business, Undermining Consumer Choice, and Hurting Innovation.

Donald Trump has made a career of failure — from six bankruptcies to dozens of failed ventures, and now to a disastrous economic policy that is destroying American small businesses, limiting consumer choice, and damaging international innovation.

Let’s begin with the facts. Trump is:

  • A six-time declared bankrupt,
  • A convicted sex offender,
  • A rapist, as ruled in civil court,
  • Found guilty on 34 felony counts of fraud and falsifying business records,
  • Indicted in three separate and pending criminal cases totalling 57 felony counts,
  • And a serial business failure, with over 20 collapsed ventures, including:
    • Trump Plaza Hotel (New York) – Bankruptcy, 1992.
    • Trump Taj Mahal (Atlantic City) – Bankruptcy and eventual sale.
    • Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts – Filed for bankruptcy in 2004; became Trump Entertainment Resorts.
    • Trump Entertainment Resorts – Filed for bankruptcy multiple times; eventually taken over by investors.
    • Trump University – Shut down after fraud allegations; settled for $25 million.
    • Trump Vodka, Trump Steaks, Trump Magazine, Trump Airlines, Trump Mortgage, and dozens more — all commercial flops.

Now, he's exporting that same lack of acumen to trade policy — isolating the USA from the rest of the world with a backward-looking 1860’s world view delivering devastating results for both U.S. consumers and small international businesses like ours.

A Real-World Impact: The Gentle Roller Company

Many of you have followed the development of our business for some time. For the uninitiated, we are a small, Australian-owned business producing The Gentle Roller, a unique felting machine loved by fibre artists around the world. Our product is a hybrid: about 25% of its value is from Australian-made components; final assembly, partly completed by me, takes place in China in our premises; and global airfreight is managed by an American freight and logistics company. Crucially, 100% of revenues go to our Australian company — not to China.

Despite this, the Gentle Roller is classified as “from China” because of where the Gentle Roller undergoes its last ‘substantial transformation’.

For the past seven years, we’ve shipped our product globally, under a “tariff-free” code. We’ve built a loyal customer base worldwide. And U.S. customers, who accounted for 30–35% of our global sales were previously advantaged:

  • Canadian customers pay up to 5% import duty,
  • Australians pay 10% GST,
  • Europeans pay up to 32% VAT/TVA,
  • U.S. customers paid nothing.

But not anymore.

Under the Trump administration’s escalating trade war with China, the U.S. government has imposed extraordinary tariffs on Chinese-sourced goods — even on goods like ours, which are designed, owned, and profited by a non-Chinese company. As of now, U.S. buyers may be hit with tariffs of 145% or possibly 245%, effectively doubling or tripling the purchase price of The Gentle Roller.

The Result?

  • We have not sold a single Gentle Roller, thru normal channels, to the U.S. since inauguration day.#
  • U.S. customers are effectively now cut off from access to our product.#
  • Our overall sales have dropped by 30–35%.
  • We’ve had to adjust to survive — thankfully, sales in Australia, Canada, Europe, UK and New Zealand are holding strong.

The Trump administration claims these tariffs are meant to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. But for small, innovative global companies like ours — and for the hundreds of small U.S. businesses that source products or components from China — this is not economically viable. Shifting production to the U.S. would increase manufacturing and shipping costs, penalizing not just American consumers, but every Gentle Roller customer worldwide.

The more likely outcome? US businesses which rely on China will shut down. USA jobs will be lost. US consumers will have fewer choices – unable to obtain a product like the Gentle Roller at a price that is readily available to the rest of the world. Creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship will suffer.  How does that “Make America Great Again”?

The U.S. is being driven backwards into a fantasy of self-sufficient isolation — where the goal appears to be the local manufacturing of jocks, socks and singlets.  Meanwhile, it ignores and underfunds in opportunities for a high-tech, connected, collaborative future that could deliver global climate goals, health initiatives, nano technology, alternate power sources, quantum materials, AI initiatives and other huge growth opportunities.

American consumers are paying the price, quite literally, with an economy in disarray.

It’s profoundly damaging and makes no economic or moral sense.

Australia Will Keep Innovating

Australians are known for punching above our weight when it comes to innovation — from the combine harvester, the black box flight recorder, Wi-Fi, the pacemaker, ultrasound technology, the cochlear implant and Google Maps — to The Gentle Roller.

We’ll keep finding ways forward with novel and beneficial solution to any problem.

But it saddens us that our valued U.S. customers, many of whom have followed or supported us since the beginning, are now locked out by a broken policy system guided by failed ideology.

# A Message to U.S. Customers

If you’re in the United States and still want a Gentle Roller without the punitive taxes, please contact us directly via our Contact Us page. We’ll do everything we can to help reduce the impact of these new tariffs and get a product to you fairly and affordably, despite the hurdles imposed by a government working against small business.

We’re here to support you — even if your government isn’t.