Brown discusses tariffs with small business owners – tribtoday.com

Jan 23, 2026
Staff photo / David Skolnick Sherrod Brown, center, a Democrat running for Senate, discusses the impacts of tariffs and other issues on small businesses during a Thursday event at the Knox Building in downtown Youngstown. Joining Brown are, from left, Debbie Woodford, Jacob Harver, Joey Mamounis and Matt McClure.
YOUNGSTOWN — Democrat Sherrod Brown, who is looking to return to the U.S. Senate, discussed the impacts tariffs and affordability issues are having on small businesses.
Brown met Thursday with four small business owners at the Knox Building downtown. The four are Jacob Harver, who owns the Knox Building; Matt McClure, co-owner of Youngstown Clothing Company; Debbie Woodford, president of 4S Fabrications; and Joey Mamounis, co-owner of Prima Restaurant Group.
Brown said he doesn’t hate tariffs and has testified in support of them in front of the International Trade Commission in “very specific” cases.
Brown said tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump, a Republican, are “reckless,” particularly those imposed on Canada.
“If tariffs are done right, it helps companies decide what to do next,” Brown said. “But if tariffs are on-again, off-again and reckless, [small business owners] don’t know what to do in the future.”
Brown said he supports “tariffs in a way that makes sense for workers. You don’t tariff Canada and do these reckless tariffs when the government gets mad they put on a tariff on a country to get them to do something else. That’s not the way it should work.”
McClure said 90% of his products are made in the United States, but he still feels the impact of tariffs.
“There is spillover” because of tariffs, he said. “People are blaming tariffs. We’ve seen prices increase in our raw materials.”
McClure said his business has seen the cost of health insurance double in the past year.
Mamounis said his business has “had unprecedented (increased) costs in food. Eggs, for instance, I feel like have quadrupled the price they used to be.”
Brown, who lost a reelection bid for a fourth six-year term in 2024 to Republican Bernie Moreno, is challenging U.S. Sen. Jon Husted, who was appointed in January 2025 to a vacant seat, in the November general election.
Husted said during a recent interview that tariffs are “a tool in the tool box to have leverage to force more companies to make things in America. Tariffs are part of the discussion.”
Husted praised Trump for enforcing trade deals.
“So the idea that we are engaging in negotiations across the globe to make sure that America gets fairer treatment on our trade policy is a good thing,” Husted said.
Brown, who conducted small roundtable discussions when he was a senator, said he prefers them to town-hall meetings.
“I don’t like the big town halls where people scream at each other,” he said. “I don’t see a lot of value in that. But these kinds of discussions I will have stories to tell in other communities, in the campaign and in the Senate come this next year. You hear local businesses have to adapt and change and be smart, be clever and often take salary and health-care hits themselves as owners in cities like this. Then the government keeps doing stupid things.”
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