WASHINGTON (TNND) — In early April, Elizabeth Mahon, owner of the children's store Three Littles in Washington's Union Market, started getting emails from her suppliers, telling her to expect instructions to increase prices.

She didn't realize at the time how high they were going to be.

Strollers, Mahon's top source of revenue, have been where she's felt the most pain.

“It was shockingly high," Mahon said.

In a social media post informing her customers on price increases effective May 5 – which Mahon is contractually obligated to implement – she listed six different strollers from the popular UPPABaby brand that will soon be between $150 and $300 more expensive.

In a public statement, UPPABaby said it's made "every effort behind the scenes to absorb as much of the cost as possible, but some price increases are unfortunately unavoidable."

Nuna, a similar brand, has also raised prices due to tariffs.

“There’s still the total possibility that these prices increase even further," Mahon said.

Most car seats and strollers sold in the U.S. are manufactured in China. President Donald Trump has imposed 145% tariffs on Chinese goods, and China has retaliated with 125% tariffs on American goods.

The steep levies have upended trade between the world's two largest economies.

At the Port of Los Angeles, import volumes have dropped dramatically. Scheduled vessels this week were down more than 27% from last week. And next week, there will be 36% fewer vessels scheduled than the same week a year ago, according to data from Port Optimizer.

The trade war has fueled concerns about empty store shelves, a resurging inflation rate, and, worst of all, a recession.

In the middle of Three Littles was a reminder of that anxiety: stacks of boxes of recent orders and extra inventory Mahon managed to secure.

“We’ve had a huge uptick in sales, which ordinarily would be good, but I’ve been saying it’s kind of like Sunday scaries on steroids because we know that eventually, once these prices are higher, that these sales are going to drop off," Mahon said.

In addition to keeping her small business afloat, Mahon said she's concerned about what tariffs on baby products will mean for child safety.

"If my products become more expensive, then so too do the more affordable options and there are going to be families that are put in the position of using expired car seats or buying secondhand car seats and it’s extremely unsafe because car seats can be in a crash that makes the car seat unusable, unsafe, and it is totally invisible to the naked eye," Mahon said.

There's no telling how long the triple-digit tariffs between the U.S. and China will last. Though it was Trump who imposed tariffs first, the White House said it's China's responsibility to de-escalate the situation.

“It is the surplus country that always loses the most," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said.

China has continued to deny Trump's claims that the two sides have spoken on the issue.

"The tariff war was unilaterally provoked by the U.S., and 'whoever caused the knot should be the one to untie it.' If the U.S. genuinely seeks to resolve the issue through dialogue and negotiation, it must correct mistakes, abandon coercive tactics and remove all unilateral tariff measures against China," said Liu Pengyu, the spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in the U.S.

The White House trade team has also been in talks with trading partners across the globe under a 90-day pause of individualized double-digit tariffs. On Monday, Bessent said India may be one of the first countries with which they'll sign a trade deal.

On Capitol Hill, Democrats have lambasted the president's tariffs as a tax on American families.

Last week, Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., who serves as ranking member for the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, called on the Trump administration to exempt small U.S. businesses from the tariffs.

"These businesses simply do not have the financial cushion to absorb price shocks or the resources to navigate sudden changes to an already complex supply chain," Markey said.

Ultimately, Trump's stated goals of his tariff plans are to stop the flow of fentanyl into the United States, shrink trade deficits, create domestic manufacturing jobs and generate tariff revenue that could be used to pay down the national debt or substitute income taxes. It's why, in an interview with Time Magazine, Trump said he'd consider it a "total victory" if, in a year from now, the U.S. still imposed double-digit tariffs on foreign goods.

Some major companies have announced plans for major investments in the U.S., like Johnson & Johnson, which said it intends to spend $55 billion on new manufacturing facilities over four years and IBM, pledging a five-year, $150 billion investment in domestic production.

There's been no assertion by anyone, in or outside the White House, that the U.S. will ever be able to produce absolutely everything–car seats and strollers included–on its own, making it difficult for Mahon to comprehend why baby items have been caught in the crosshairs of this global trade war.

“I would be really lovely to be able to manufacture everything here," Mahon said. "But there's not the infrastructure. There’s no way to do that yet.”