For a lot of Maine businesses, our success for the year depends on a strong summer season. Unnecessary and harmful policy decisions in Washington are putting the entire financial year at risk.

Maine summers are the stuff of magic. For families like my own here in Maine and visitors from across the country and Canada, it’s a season of barbecues, hikes, camping, fishing and beach days. For a lot of small businesses in the tourism and hospitality industry, it’s the season that determines if you make it.

Maine summers should mean opportunity. Opportunity for families to make lasting memories and opportunity for working people and small businesses to make a living. President Trump’s arbitrary and reckless tariffs are putting the magic and opportunity of a Maine summer in jeopardy.

As the owner of Maine Beer Company, I see the negative impact of President Trump’s unnecessary tariffs on our team, the families that visit our brewery, the farmers who supply our ingredients and on our ability to plan for the future.

For people who work in the hospitality industry, summer usually means increased hours, bigger paychecks and stuffed tip jars. For small businesses like ours, summer usually means ramping up production — hiring more staff, staying open later, opening that extra outdoor patio or adding additional shifts.

The daily chaos out of Washington and the resulting decline in Canadian visitors have put those things at risk, making business planning virtually impossible.

Should we move forward with an expansion to provide much-needed brewing capacity (which means more jobs and opportunity)? Will the cost of our bottles and bottle caps increase because of tariffs? Will tariffs be paused? Will breweries get tariff relief, or will that only go to those with enough money to buy access?

Even a small business like ours — which employs more than 110 Maine people — is frozen in the uncertainty of Trump’s tariff chaos.

We would love to brew more beer. Brewing more beer means expanding our building, the cost of which is impossible to determine because of tariffs. Expansion also means more brewing equipment, some of which must be imported.

How much will tariffs drive up the cost? How much will raw materials used for equipment built in the USA cost? Will a tariff-driven economic slump hurt tourism even more, making any investment more risky? No one knows these answers, and not knowing is the problem.

The most absurd part: This trade war doesn’t need to happen.

While President Trump has never had to live on a budget, most Mainers do. And they’re seeing the same thing business owners are: This uncertainty is raising the costs of everyday goods and services.

When the cost of groceries and electricity go up and there’s no sense of security that our government has a stable, steady plan to bring those costs down, working families get anxious and suffer.

I’m not an economist, but I do understand what it means when working families get anxious. It means belts tighten. It means middle-class families struggle more than they already are. It means small businesses don’t take those leaps to hire more people, stay open a little later and buy that new piece of equipment. It means families don’t take beach trips, tourists don’t spend their money in our small towns, and the magic of a Maine summer dims a little bit.

Like most fathers and small-business owners, I think about the little plans we have for the days ahead and the big dreams we have for our collective success. We deserve leaders who think the same way, leaders who plan for a stable, prosperous future.

What we don’t need is a president who pulls the day-to-day stability out from under our feet and jeopardizes the economic security of Maine’s small business owners and middle-class families.

Maine deserves better.