Virginia business welcomed President Donald Trump’s reduction on tariffs with China announced Monday morning. They hope it could lead to more industry changes.

Don Bright with the lumber company Meherrin River Forest Products in Lacrosse said he had containers of logs on the water, headed for China, when the tariffs kicked in a few weeks ago.

He had to work with shipping companies to find new ports, sometimes diverting to further-out stops and transporting product over land to meet the tariff deadline. Other shipments weren’t as lucky.

“It was not a trade tariff; It was a trade embargo,“ he said, adding the financial impact was being passed on to his customers in the end. “Whatever the final invoice is to that customer; all the cost to get it there.”

He’s even got some containers still in the water, waiting to go to ports after calling in favors.

“I’ve heard as many as 350 containers redirected by one person,” he said. “That's in the $8 million range.”

Still, Bright is optimistic Trump’s plans will lead to more reshoring of U.S. industry.

“Meaning we don’t export the raw material; we start exporting value products whether that be furniture or lumber - lumber is a lot more valuable than just logs.”

Lisa McSherry runs the formal dress shop Lex’s of Carytown. She said her U.S. designers had started adding 20% to dresses in the wake of Trump’s tariffs, and that may not go down.

“There’s been nervousness in the industry with changes day in, day out, and the designers not knowing what to do,” she said. And that 20% may not seem like much on $100 dresses, think the upcoming Homecoming season, but as brides look to summer and fall weddings, that 20% can add up on more expensive gowns.

“It could impact wedding planning costs,” she said. “The flowers they receive, decorative items.”

But she’s optimistic tariff negotiations will lead to a more level playing field. Especially changes to the de minimis exception which saw a massive influx of foreign clothes and goods in recent years.

“I’d personally love to see less of your cheap, toxic Shein and Temu items coming into this country,” McSherry said.

And while Trump’s tariff plan appeared to aim for a broad re-shoring of American business, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC early Monday they’re looking at specific industries, not a wide-spread change in international trade.

“We do not want a generalized decoupling from China,” he said, suggesting they would mostly aim to build back American steel, medicines, semiconductors. “But what we do want is a strategic decoupling for strategic necessities.”

Bright's optimism for reshoring lumber was not shared by McSherry when it came to garment production: "That's just simply never going to happen in my industry," she said.

Trump’s tariff reduction is temporary, but it couldn’t have come at a better time; a late April survey from the Northern Virginia Chamber of Commerce found about half of business leaders were optimistic for their companies’ future, down from 81% at the start of the year.

Bright and McSherry, meanwhile, said they’d both ramp up business in the coming weeks to minimize future tariff impacts.

“A 90-day deal, our average container stays on the water for 7-6 weeks,” Bright said. “That means we’ve got a few weeks to sell something, get it on the boat, in the next two weeks. Everything else will be too late.”

This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio , was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association .