Small Watch Company Becomes Face of Battle Against Trump Tariffs

When Asher Rapkin got together with a fellow enthusiast several years ago to start a small watch company, he had no idea he would end up in a David versus Goliath battle against the federal government’s trade policy.Mr. Rapkin’s California-based independent watch retailer, Collective Horology, is fighting what it describes as “untenable” Trump administration tariffs in a new lawsuit seeking to invalidate the levies.“It’s deeply frustrating and very damaging,” Mr. Rapkin told The New York Sun of the tariffs.Mr. Rapkin and partner Gaby Reilly put up $1,000 of their own money to start the company which specializes in pieces produced by independent watchmakers. Its inventory of artisanal watches come primarily from Switzerland and the European Union, making it subject to high tariffs.Mr. Rapkin says the tariff policy has been highly erratic and has left small businesses like his struggling.“It’s just making the cost of doing business in the United States preventative,” Mr. Rapkin said “To see my taxes skyrocket and to have those numbers change so dramatically, and what appears to be erratically, it makes it very difficult to plan, to grow, to hire, to do all the things that are necessary to grow and be a successful small business.”President Trump has made tariffs a cornerstone of his economic agenda. He argues that other countries have taken advantage of the United States and tariffs are needed to encourage companies to produce products domestically. The tariffs, however, have faced legal setbacks. The Supreme Court struck down Mr. Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs, saying he overstepped his authority by using the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose global reciprocal tariffs.The president quickly pivoted to a new global 10 percent tariff, citing Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 as the basis. Those tariffs had a statutory time limit that expired on July 24.Mr. Trump has now turned to Section 301 of the same trade act to impose longer-term tariffs. The Trump administration claims a group of 60 countries are producing goods with forced labor or do not have strong enough protections to keep them out of their markets.Mr. Rapkin says it is not only the direct tariffs that are driving up costs but their ancillary effects. He says one side effect of the tariffs is that the American dollar has become depressed against the Swiss franc. “And when you add all of these things together, what it means is, products that I used to pay one thing for are now anywhere from 20 to 30, sometimes even, at the height of it, 50 percent more expensive than they were prior to April of 2025,” Mr. Rapkin said.Collective Horology co-founders Asher Rapkin (left) and Gaby Reilly (right) are suing the Trump administration over tariffs. Via Collective HorologyCollective is a five-person company and the owners say tariffs have cost them access to capital to grow, hire new employees, and buy new inventory. They say the tariffs have also made the watches they sell more expensive for consumers.The company tried to absorb all of the tariff costs when they first went into effect, but it eventually had to figure out ways to begin passing along some of the cost of the import duties. “We do everything that we can to try and mitigate it, but at a certain point in time, we’ve had to figure out ways to share it,” Mr. Rapkin said of the tariffs.A libertarian public-interest litigation firm, the Liberty Justice Center, is representing Mr. Rapkin’s company and a New York-based online spice retailer, Burlap and Barrel, in the case.“The administration allowed one global tariff to expire and immediately replaced it with another under a different statute,” the Liberty Justice Center chief executive officer, Sara Albrecht said. “Changing the statute doesn’t change the law. Every tariff authority has limits, and every administration must respect them.”The center says the tariffs apply to lawful imports with no demonstrated connection to forced labor, including products imported by American small businesses with transparent supply chains. The complaint alleges that the trade representative failed to explain how taxing those products will cause foreign governments to change their import policies.“These tariffs would punish a responsible American business, and the farmers we work with, without showing how taxes on our spices would address the policies of foreign governments that USTR says it is targeting,” a Burlap & Barrel co-founder, Ethan Frisch, said.As for Collective, Mr. Rapkin says he reached out to the entrepreneurial community when tariffs first became a worry. He said it quickly became clear that nobody knew what to do and that’s why he was willing to step up and sue.“This is keeping people awake at night. It’s ruined some businesses and it’s set many back,” Mr. Rapkin said. “Separate from any sort of political rhetoric, there’s just basic fact, and when businesses are starved of capital, they can’t do the things that they need to do, and if they can’t do those things, then communities struggle. And there are real implications to what we’re seeing here,” Mr. Rapkin added.

Small Watch Company Becomes Face of Battle Against Trump Tariffs

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