A Thiers knifemaker exporting a €120 knife to the United States used to see a net margin of around 15%. Since April 2025, US customs duties take 20% at the border. His margin has turned negative. The knife hasn’t changed. The market has.

The numbers behind the wall

The Trump administration imposed a 20% tariff on imports from the European Union and 31% on those from Switzerland. The measures, which came into force in 2025, are on top of existing duties. For a European craft product sold in the United States, it’s a brutal, non-negotiable surcharge applied at the border.

Consumer prices are starting to move. According to The State of Fashion 2026 (BoF), clothing prices in the US rose 1.3% between January and July 2025, and 55% of industry leaders surveyed expect further tariff-related increases in 2026.

And then there’s the dollar. According to the ECB, the dollar fell roughly 12% against the euro since early 2025, with a sharp drop following the April tariff announcements. A double blow for the European exporter: higher duties and fewer dollars for every euro invoiced.

Those who absorb, those who sink

The major luxury groups — LVMH, Hermès, Richemont — have levers. They adjust retail prices, reallocate stock between markets, optimise their supply chains. Their gross margins often exceed 60%. Twenty points of customs duties are a problem. Not a death sentence.

For a small workshop, the maths are different. A Laguiole blacksmith employing four craftsmen and exporting 30% of his output to the United States has no logistics department. No network of American boutiques to spread the costs. He has a production cost, a selling price and a margin of 10 to 20%. The 20% tariff eats it all.

The options are limited. Raise the selling price? American consumers, already stretched, turn to cheaper local or Asian alternatives. Absorb the extra cost? The workshop runs at a loss. Abandon the US market? That means losing a third of revenue overnight.

Three workshops, three realities

A Thiers knifemaker. Eight employees, five of them at the forges. The United States accounted for 25% of sales, mainly through specialty shops in New York and Portland. Since the tariffs, his American distributors have halved their orders. The final price of his knives has jumped 25% on the shelf, between tariffs and the falling dollar. Customers hesitate, orders melt away.

A ceramist in Provence. She exports her hand-thrown pieces to East Coast galleries. Each piece is unique, priced between $80 and $300. With 20% extra duties, her gallery owners ask her to lower her ex-works price. She can’t: the clay, the glaze, the wood-firing, the hours of labour — everything has an incompressible cost. Two out of five galleries have stopped ordering.

A cobbler in the Tarn. A bespoke bootmaker, he produces made-to-measure for an international clientele. The US accounted for 20% of his order book. Orders continue, but each pair delivered now costs the client 20% more. Some wait. Others cancel. The order book is slowly shrinking.

A structural problem

The tariff makes no distinction between an €8,000 Hermès bag and a hand-thrown stoneware bowl at €45. The rate is the same: 20%. But the bowl doesn’t have the same margin as the bag. The tariff system is blind to the size of the business, the nature of the product, the economic reality of the person who made it.

European craft federations have alerted Brussels. The Assemblée permanente des chambres de métiers et de l’artisanat (APCMA) is calling for a compensation mechanism for very small exporting businesses. So far, nothing concrete. Trade negotiations between Washington and Brussels are at a standstill. The EU has announced targeted countermeasures on American products — bourbon, motorcycles, jeans — but no direct support for affected artisans.

What’s at stake

Behind the percentages, these are skills at risk of losing access to the American market. Not the brands that make headlines, but workshops of five, ten, twenty people who spent years building a clientele across the Atlantic.

A knifemaker who loses his American market won’t get it back in six months if tariffs come down. Distributors will have found other suppliers. Customers will have changed habits. A commercial relationship, once broken, is slow to rebuild.

The big groups will weather the storm. The small workshops are counting orders. And for some, the numbers no longer add up.