How will Canadian and Mexican tariffs impact Chicago-area businesses and consumers?

CHICAGO (WLS) -- With revenues down for so many Little Village businesses, concerns remain about the potential impact of tariffs on consumers, business owners and the community.

Dulcelandia Senior Vice President Marco Rodriguez says any business that depends on goods from Mexico is being tested.

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"It's scary. It's a scary time in our business. Everything you see around us is either imported by ourselves, bought by ourselves and made in Mexico," Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez operates his family's four stores around Chicagoland. His parents started Dulcelandia 30 years ago after the North American Free Trade Agreement was signed.

He says they wanted to bring some of the specialty sweets and toys they loved from Mexico to Chicago. More than half of the items are made by hand, like their piñatas from a fourth-generation Mexican company.

Rodriguez says never before has this business faced such uncertainty.

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"It feels very anxiety-producing. Every day, you wake up listening to something that will affect your livelihood, affect the livelihood of the people we employ of the community," Rodriguez said.

Economist Julián Diaz is a professor at Loyola's Quinlan School of Business.

"The point of tariffs is to make the goods more expensive. That's the whole thing, so that domestic producers have an advantage," Diaz said.

Diaz explained that an advantage for domestic manufacturers or producers works if there is a workforce available, but with the low unemployment, that possibility seems unlikely, at least in the short term.

"It's not clear where the people who are going to be producing those goods are going to come from, right? Unemployment is like 4%, so where are all of these workers that are going to produce these things domestically, where are they going to come from?" Diaz said.

In the short term, if the tariffs take effect, Diaz expects costs to go up for shoppers on any item that crosses the border from Canada or Mexico, even if the business tries to absorb some of the cost.

With the tariffs set to begin Tuesday, some business owners are bracing for what that will mean for them and their customers.