According to the analysis by Michael Negron and Mimla Wardak, the administration’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcement triggered a sharp increase in duties collected from American businesses. From April through September 2025, CAP estimated, the roughly 236,000 small-business importers in the U.S. paid an average of more than $151,000 in additional tariffs compared to the same period in 2024. (CAP cited the centrist Chamber of Commerce’s research on the small-business importer sector of the economy.)

“The Trump administration’s broad, costly, and frequently shifting policies threaten to undermine one of the strongest engines of the American economy,” Negron said in a statement to Fortune. “A season of opportunity for small businesses has turned into one of uncertainty.”

The burden is not limited to larger enterprises. The report found “mom-and-pop” businesses—those with fewer than 50 employees—paid, on average, over $86,000 more per business during this six-month window than they did the previous year. The outlook for the immediate future is equally grim: CAP projects that if current monthly costs persist, the typical small business will face a tariff bill exceeding $500,000 in 2026, potentially resulting in additional layoffs, bankruptcies, and delayed investments. For the holidays, CAP concludes the tariffs are a “costly lump of coal” in American small business’ collective, proverbial Christmas stocking.

Administrative red tape stifles growth

Beyond direct financial costs, small business owners are struggling with a sudden increase in bureaucratic red tape. The administration eliminated the de minimis exception, which previously allowed low-value shipments to enter the U.S. without duties or extensive paperwork. This policy change has forced businesses to prepay new tariff rates and complete complex customs forms for millions of shipments that were formerly exempt.

Jyoti Jaiswal, founder of OMSutra, a small business selling sustainable fashion and home goods, told CAP the changes have forced her to consolidate shipments and block more capital upfront. Jaiswal noted her company now spends 10 to 15 hours on tariff-related administrative work per shipment, up from eight to 10 hours previously, preventing her from passing costs on to consumers without losing competitiveness.

Similarly, Legrand Lindor, CEO of LMI Textiles, told CAP his medical supply company went from spending zero time on tariff paperwork to spending four to five hours per transaction. Facing a 20% increase in product costs—roughly $80,000 in additional spending—Lindor was forced to scrap plans to open a new warehouse in 2025.

The rising costs appear to be cooling the labor market for small firms. Data from payroll provider ADP shows that businesses with fewer than 50 employees laid off 120,000 workers in November 2025, the highest number of small-business layoffs in five years.

While the administration claimed foreign nations would pay these costs, the report emphasizes tariffs are taxes paid by American importers. Goldman Sachs calculated that of August 2025, businesses had absorbed 51% of the cost of tariffs, though they had passed 37% onto consumers through higher prices. A survey by Small Business Majority from late 2025 indicated 74% of small-business owners are now worried about their business surviving the next 12 months.

Compounding financial pressures

The tariff crisis coincides with other financial headwinds. The report highlights the expiration of enhanced Affordable Care Act premium tax credits in 2026 threatens to double premiums for millions of entrepreneurs and small-business employees.

With the holiday season typically accounting for at least one-quarter of annual revenue for retailers, the convergence of high tariffs and administrative confusion has delivered what the report describes as “a decidedly unhappy holiday season” for the nation’s 236,000 small-business importers. Without a change in policy, these businesses face the prospect of escalating costs and reduced investment heading into the new year.

For this story, Fortune journalists used generative AI as a research tool. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.

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The Menlo Park, Calif.-based fintech and trading platform, which offers traditional asset and cryptocurrency trading, announced in November that CFO Jason Warnick is retiring. He will move into an advisory role in the first quarter of 2026 and remain with the company until Sept. 1, 2026, as Shiv Verma, SVP of finance and strategy and treasurer, steps into the top finance job.​ Fortune recently sat down with the duo at Robinhood’s Washington, D.C., office to delve into how they orchestrated the handoff—and what they learned along the way. 

Today Robinhood has a fully built-out finance organization and a place in the S&P 500. In 2024, the company earned $2.95 billion in total net revenues and annual net income of $1.41 billion. This marked Robinhood’s first year of GAAP profitability year since going public in 2021. Robinhood is growing fast—its revenue is already approaching half the size of mid-tier financial firms like T. Rowe Price and Broadridge.

But when Warnick joined the company in late 2018 after two decades at Amazon, the finance function was barely a dozen people. Verma had been hired as treasurer weeks earlier, plus there were a handful of accountants, and one finance contractor.

In talking with Warnick and Verma, both based on the West Coast, they conveyed a startup-like vibe at the company: informal, not at all stuffy, and open to ideas and debate, and at times, laughter. “I actually told him it’s not too late if he wants to change his mind,” Verma quipped of Warnick’s pending retirement. “I’ll miss him as friend.”

Verma considers himself as super analytical. “I’m a math guy; a former bond trader,” he said. But what he learned from Warnick is the ability to delegate. Otherwise, you can “start at six in the morning and go till midnight,” he said. “And I have a three month old at home.”

“His wife is certainly upset with me, right?” Warnick quipped. “She loves Jason; she’s not such a fan of the timing,” Verma parried back. “Although, she is genuinely happy for both of us,” he added.

The camaraderie between Warnick and Verma began as members of a team, led by Robinhood CEO Vladimir Tenev, that navigated the company through some rough waters. In March 2020, Robinhood suffered a major app outage on one of the biggest up days in market history, leaving users unable to trade as the Dow surged, Warnick recalled. 

“We weren’t engineers, and you can feel kind of helpless,” he said. But he and Verma quickly concluded that their role was not to fix code but to triage stakeholders. That meant calling bankers, investors, and board members in real time and being as transparent as possible, Warnick said. That groundwork, he believes, helped Robinhood raise billions of dollars in early 2021, when meme-stock volatility and surging volumes again stressed the platform. The capital raise was aimed at strengthening the company’s financial position and supporting its rapid growth at the time, Warnick said.

Building a successor by design

This transition was years in the making, something you might expect at a 100 year old Fortune 500 firm but not necessarily a nimble disruptor. “We’ve been joined at the hip for seven years,” Verma quips. But over those seven years, Warnick steadily expanded Verma’s remit—from treasury to finance, then investor relations, corporate development, benchmarking and customer strategy, and partnerships. Along the way, Verma hired a dedicated treasurer and a VP of finance, often at Warnick’s urging, to allow him to step back and concentrate on higher-leverage decisions.​

That deliberate scope expansion mirrored Warnick’s own progression at Amazon, where his responsibilities grew, eventually culminating in oversight of a 500-person finance organization and a role as chief of staff to the CFO. At Robinhood, the same model meant that by the time the transition was announced, Verma was already managing more than half the finance organization and acting as a central node across the business. He has attended every board meeting since Robinhood went public, co-presented earnings, and regularly joined audit and risk committee sessions.

Verma describes the last seven years as a compressed Silicon Valley lifecycle: early buildout, pandemic-era hypergrowth, the GameStop frenzy and IPO, followed by a sharp selloff. In 2022, Robinhood cut roughly 30% of its workforce and shifted to a general manager model. “We’ve come a long way,” Verma said, “to a very skilled public company.”

The most important skill of a CFO

Today CFOs are expected to own the numbers, but also act as core strategist, digital leader, and enterprise change agent. Earlier in his career, Warnick said he was once asked by a mentor, What do you think is the most important aspect of a CFO’s job? He answered, capital allocation. 

“That’s important; that’s what drives future returns for the company,” he recalls his mentor telling him. “But you don’t get to allocate the capital yourself.” The most important skill a CFO has, Warnick said, is influencing the ultimate decision-maker—the CEO. “So our job is to bring data and finance into the discussion and influence the outcome,” he said. “And I think that that is one area where Shiv just shines.”

Verma spends a lot of time with Tenev, the board, and cross-functional leaders in engineering, legal, compliance, and risk, focusing on the decisions that matter most for Robinhood’s long-term trajectory, he said.

For the finance leaders, what looks like succession planning was arguably really the foundation of a solid mentorship. “He’s still my first call when I’m struggling with something,” Verma said of Warnick. 

As for Warnick’s retirement plans, they are still being fleshed out, but will include travel with his wife, as they are now empty nesters. One thing’s for sure: if Verma wants some advice, he’s only a phone call away.