Jon-Mark Craddock hasn’t been sleeping well lately. Like entrepreneurs across the country, the owner and CEO of Spicewood-based La Matera, a line of belts, wallets, and watchbands, is experiencing nights haunted by one thing: tariffs. “It definitely is keeping me up at night,” he says.

On April 2, President Trump announced sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs of 10 percent on all imported goods and additional tariffs on select trade partners, including China and the European Union. Then he suspended the additional tariffs (but not the ones on China) for ninety days, mere hours after they went into effect, and announced that various tech goods would be exempt from the China tariffs. He’s also gone back and forth on another slew of tariffs on cars, steel, and more, and on tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods. Meanwhile, his advisers have floated the idea that the tariffs might be negotiated—“ninety deals in ninety days,” one promised—or, perhaps, not imposed at all. Since April, the United States has agreed to cut tariffs on Chinese goods from 145 percent to 30 percent—but only for ninety days. Oh, and over Memorial Day weekend, the president said he would delay imposing the 50 percent tariffs on the EU that he had announced . . . earlier in the weekend.

Confused? You’re not alone. If you happen to be the chief executive of a megacorporation, the good news is, you probably have a team of in-house lawyers and advisers helping you navigate these troubled waters. But for small-business owners—including many in Texas, like Craddock—the tariffs can be all but impossible to sort through. And soon, this uncertainty, and likely the tariffs themselves, will have an effect on what you see—and pay for—at your favorite shop. At some point, the tariffs will hit close to home—or, more precisely, in your home. In your closet, to be exact.

Because, it turns out, your next Western shirt, pair of jeans, or pair of cowboy boots might cost significantly more than what it does now—assuming your go-to maker is still around and not a casualty of the growing trade war. That’s because while many Texas style essentials are made in this state, many are not. And even the Texas makers rely on materials sourced elsewhere.

Craddock’s situation embodies the problems many Texas clothing brands are facing, as well as the complexities of making products in the twenty-first-century global market. La Matera’s accessories are made in several countries in addition to the U.S., including Argentina, India, and Mexico. Craddock began ramping up production at two stateside factories, in Arizona and Maine, last July, but products from those factories have yet to arrive. And given the long decline of American tanneries, the remaining few can only handle so much volume. Taken together, all this is likely to result in some combination of negotiating more favorable rates with suppliers, laying off employees, and raising prices for customers.

What likely won’t happen for most businesses in the same boat: an increase in production stateside. This touches on a common theme among the clothing and accessories companies we talked to: If the idea of the tariffs is to bring manufacturing back to America, that’s not just a matter of willpower. Factories require real estate, machinery, and, above all, people who have the training and desire to do the repetitive work of stitching and sewing, often for relatively little pay. All of these things are in short supply in America. Ask Louis Vuitton—six years after it opened a much-hyped factory in Alvarado, Texas, former employees are telling the media that the facility has consistently ranked among the company’s worst-performing in the world.

“Nobody’s coming out of college these days with a degree in manufacturing or making leather goods,” Craddock says. “Over the last twenty or thirty years, our culture has shifted young people to go toward knowledge work. And the problem is, the immigrants who are coming in are the ones who are trying to work these jobs, and a lot of those folks are getting pushed out.”

Another brand feeling the pinch is Helm, an Austin-based bootmaker that moved production offshore in 2019. Today its boots are made in Brazil, where the company can produce wares that meet its high standards while still retailing for under $300, the ideal price point for its customer base. Brazil is one of the nations set to be subject to a 10 percent tariff after the ninety-day pause, but it’s unclear to Brooks Thomas, Helm’s president and chief marketing officer, whether that represents the final number or 10 percent on top of any existing tariffs, which Thomas says have averaged around 8.5 percent. The difference is a meaningful one for a company making a high volume of premium footwear. (Most reports suggest the tariff will just be 10 percent, but obviously, Trump could change that at any time.)

For Helm, the tariff might prompt anything from cutting back on investing in new product categories to figuring out new countries to work with in the company’s supply chain. What doesn’t seem likely is returning production to the United States. “Unless there are tax incentives or massive programs to make it viable, I just don’t see it happening,” Thomas says.

Which brings up a crucial point: Many staples of the Texas wardrobe, like blue jeans, haven’t been made at scale in the Lone Star State in decades. (The country’s only remaining industrial-scale selvage denim mill, in Louisiana, just went up for auction.) George Strait might have his own line of Wranglers, but most Wranglers are imported.

As Ed Shaikh, co-owner of the luxury shop Hadleigh’s in Dallas, puts it: “You can’t make a Ferrari in Texas. I wish I could open a shop here and create American-made products. But you just can’t.” The majority of his tailored menswear is made in Italy, which, like all of the EU, will face a 50 percent tariff come July, at least as of now.) Hadleigh’s also has an outpost in Palm Beach, Florida, home to Mar-a-Lago. Shaikh, who volunteers that he voted for Trump, says his wealthy clients, who skew Republican, are outwardly espousing positivity—but if they have a late-afternoon appointment, they typically ask how the market closed before committing to, say, a $4,000 suit jacket. “We are dealing with a very affluent client base,” he says. “They’re not bothered by whether eggs are available, right? But by the same token, if they have fifty jackets in a closet, do they need fifty-one?”

Which brings up a second-order effect of the tariffs: Volatility in the stock market, and the risk of recession in the greater economy, which J.P. Morgan currently pegs at 40 percent. That could have an outsized impact on the apparel industry. Unlike higher-cost automobiles and computers, which could face tariffs but are ultimately necessities, or lower-priced items like groceries (also a necessity), what many Texas-based brands are ultimately selling are discretionary goods. And even potential customers with cash to spare might pull back on spending.

That could affect a brand like Austin’s Criquet, best known for its golf-friendly polos. In the past few years, it has focused on diversifying its product offerings and supply chain, in part to minimize risk in a situation like this. It moved production from China to three nations—Peru, Vietnam, and India—that seemed unlikely to face tariffs before Trump took office. “The United States has a free trade agreement with Peru,” notes Jennifer Wei, the brand’s chief product officer. “So for that to also be tariffed is really mind-boggling.” Tariffs on India would be the most impactful for the company—goods made there will face 26 percent tariffs unless a deal is worked out during the ninety-day pause. Wei estimates that it would take a year or two to shift manufacturing to other countries, and even longer to move it stateside.

As is the case with many brands, Criquet’s biggest time of year for sales is the holiday season. But the company’s orders for those products need to be placed with suppliers sooner rather than later, which is tricky to do when the day-by-day tariff situation is so volatile and the tariffs’ impact on customers’ spending habits remains unknown. Criquet has been building a rainy day fund, which puts it in a better position than most, though a favorable outcome is hardly certain.

The company has been trying to get up-to-the-minute data any way it can, even relying heavily on its freight forwarder, Flexport, to provide information. Meanwhile, Travis Weaver, founder of Manready Mercantile, in Houston, has been getting updates from a former employee who’s an economist. Business owners’ desperation for any kind of insider knowledge is a sign that while, say, Apple can make a large donation to the president’s inaugural committee and, perhaps not coincidentally, see smartphones and computers exempted from the tariffs on Chinese-made goods, small businesses like Manready and Criquet have nowhere to turn for a seat at the proverbial table.

“All these small businesses are either going to have to close because they can’t pay these tariffs, or they are, over the next year, going to get bought,” says Criquet cofounder Billy Nachman, who employs roughly thirty people at the company. “There’s going to be a lot of tumultuous times coming for small businesses the longer this goes on.”

Even those who do much of their manufacturing in Texas aren’t immune. Take Hamilton Shirts, which has been in business since 1883 and whose wares have adorned the likes of Lyle Lovett. Its flagship product, a dress shirt, is made in Houston. But the fabric is woven in Italy, soon subject to that 50 percent tariff—and ironically, those Italian mills often use American-grown cotton. But American cotton mills, like factories devoted to denim and leather, have largely vanished. “There’s no domestic substitute for what we do,” says David Hamilton, who owns the family business, which employs 41 people. “I had a customer the other day inquiring about the cost of a sport coat, and I was like, ‘This is the cost today. But it could go up tomorrow.’ And that’s the reality,” he says.

Even a company making its entire product line in Texas would still face added expenses and uncertainty. One business owner mentioned the costs of technology, including cellphones and web services. Another noted the price of shipping. And Don Weir, cofounder of the Austin boutique Stag Provisions for Men, said that even the bags and boxes the company uses for its products will soon cost more. He recently put down a $20,000 deposit with a Chinese company for packaging, in part to get a volume discount. “Maybe that’s just bye-bye, because we’re not going to pay to ship the product in. It just doesn’t make sense,” he says.

The much-beloved cowboy boot is no exception, either. Small makers often use imported leather, especially for exotic skins like those you’ll find on the feet of Senator Ted Cruz. When those exotic leathers are tariffed upon entry, it will add to the overall cost of the boot. Among the local makers is Fenoglio Boot Company, in tiny Nocona, about ninety miles north of Fort Worth. But, as the brand’s proprietor, Caiden Fenoglio, points out, even, say, a 10 percent tariff on 10 percent of the overall cost of a pair of boots won’t make much of an impact on the end customer. “It’s not going to affect me as much as somebody who imports a finished product,” he says. And, like some of the Texas makers we spoke with, he’s sanguine about how the tariffs might affect the country overall. “It’ll get better before it gets worse,” he says. “But you have to tear something down to build it back up.”

His sentiment echoes that of Ryan Vaughan, CEO of Rios of Mercedes, the high-end bootmaker whose wares are crafted in the Rio Grande Valley, albeit with some imported elements, including steel shanks. “It’s kind of like disciplining your child,” he says. “You hate it, but you trust that it’s going to [produce] a better result. It’s real easy to sit around and bad-mouth and complain and question, but at the end of the day, our leaders have been put in place from a higher power, I believe, and we’ve got to trust that hopefully God has his hand on our country and our business.”

Javier Treviño, whose Divide & Conquer guayaberas are made by hand in his San Antonio studio, is puzzled by the goal of the tariffs but is putting his faith in training people to make the goods of tomorrow. He plans to convert part of his six-story space into a sewing school, to help future makers learn the craft of high-end artisanship. His goal is to get the school up and running within a year. “A lot of people don’t know they have the ability until they try something,” he says. “You have to start from the ground up.”

Meanwhile, those looking to drape themselves in Texas-made goods from head to leather-clad toe should expect to pay a little more for the privilege.