Tariffs, Volatility & the Case for Early Pay
By: Charlotte Ng, Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer, OneAM
Published Wednesday, April 9, 2025 | Estimated read time: 3 min
As business owners, there’s plenty keeping us up at 1AM, from handling demanding customers, to managing operations and ensuring there’s enough money to make payroll and keep the lights on. This week, we’ve been dealt another hand – tariffs. As the news headlines focus on the wild stock market gyrations, small-to-midsized businesses (SMBs) must grapple with the imminent challenges of rising costs, and their larger customers who have the negotiating power to wring concessions from their suppliers as they seek to mitigate the effects of tariffs and manage volatility.
Impact of Tariffs on SMBs
Tariffs are taxes levied by a government on imported goods and services, adding extra cost to the price of foreign goods. This week, the Trump administration announced tariffs across the board ranging from 10% to (as of the time of writing) as high as 125%. While it’s too early to tell how bilateral deals, exclusions, and policy walk-backs will shake out and what the ultimate impact of tariffs will be on the U.S. economy, we expect there to be significant areas of impact on SMBs:
Higher input costs – If a business imports materials or goods, there will be a direct increase on their cost of goods sold (COGS).
Large corporates putting pressure on their suppliers – Companies with greater negotiating leverage will squeeze their supply chains to reduce the impact of tariffs on their end customers. This may come in the form of forcing suppliers to absorb higher costs or bumping up payment terms to conserve cash.
Lower growth and profitability – with higher input costs and limited ability to pass them through, SMBs have to brace for lower growth and face tough decisions pertaining to their businesses.
Gaps in working capital – As large customers come under pressure, some may reduce early pay programs that their suppliers rely on. Greater market volatility may also result in higher cost of borrowing and more conservative credit decisions by banks and other lenders.
How OneAM can help
When we speak with businesses, the topic of heightened volatility comes up often. As a small company ourselves, we totally get it! At OneAM, we’ve built an infrastructure that’s designed to reduce volatility and mitigate risk for SMBs, giving you the ability to quickly shore up your cash balances so you can weather the storm. By reimagining an age-old category – accounts receivable financing – we provide businesses selling to large corporate customers with immediate working capital as opposed to waiting for their invoices to convert to cash, something that may take even longer these days.
OneAM connects businesses selling receivables with sophisticated institutional investors, offering a faster, more business-friendly alternative to traditional factoring. In an environment where business owners feel like they have little control, our unique structure and platform give you control of your working capital – you see exactly what you’ll receive upfront and when your customer pays.
Learn more at our website or contact us directly at info@oneam.us.
