Hartford Business Journal

HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | MAY 5, 2025 25 Medzah Industries CEO Rafey Zaheer at the Glastonbury facility where his company assembles custom kits of medical disposables for labs and hospitals. HBJ PHOTO | STEVE LASCHEVER 'Scary Time' Here's how federal tariff policies are already impacting CT small to midsize businesses that he may bring them back down. "It's hard to quote," Zaheer said. "You don't know if it's going to be another 30% tomorrow." "It's a scary time just because you don't know what will transpire from all of this," he added. Higher prices Medzah — which was named Connecticut Manufacturer of the Year in 2025 by the U.S. Small Business Administration — has been in business since 2014, so this is not Zaheer's first rodeo. He said the imposition of tariffs on China during the first Trump administration drove the business to adapt, diversifying its overseas supplier sources to include Turkey, Malaysia and elsewhere. But he said Trump's stated aim with this new round of tariffs, to drive manufacturing within the U.S., just simply doesn't apply. "To manufacture gloves, the raw By Harriet Jones hjones@hartfordbusiness.com T here are small businesses all around Connecticut that are heavily reliant on overseas trade, and for them, the news cycle is now an obsession. "You're watching the news intensely every single day to see what's going to change today," said Rafey Zaheer, the founder and CEO of Glastonbury-based Medzah. His business is medical dispos- ables — gloves, gowns, diapers, crutches, walking sticks, custom kits for labs and many other items. He sells to all of the hospital systems in Connecticut, as well as to labs and home healthcare delivery services mostly in New England. Medzah's biggest customers are Hartford HealthCare and Boston Children's Hospital. Most of the company's raw mate- rials and supplies come from over- seas — many from China — and tariffs have already hit the business hard. "Some product that cost us $40,000 a container is now going to cost us upwards of $120,000 to $130,000. What are we going to do about that?" Zaheer said. For now, he's talking to his customers and trying to figure it out. "You can't pass that cost along … to that degree," said Zaheer, whose company has 92 employees and does about $34 million in annual revenue. "The hospitals will RFP it out to some- body else. They're looking for us to be a good partner and say, 'hey, we're willing to do 50% of the price increase, you take the other half.' So, that's kind of what our strategy has been." He's far from alone. In 2024, Connecticut imported $22.7B worth of goods. In January 2025 alone, $113 million in goods came in from China, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity, a data tool originally founded at MIT. Apart from the sheer cost increase, Zaheer said the added uncertainty is proving really difficult. Trump has appeared to change his mind on his trade strategy several times in the last few months, at one point sending tariffs on China to 145%, but more recently signaling Continued on next page CT'S TOP 2024 IMPORT TRADE PARTNERS RANK PARTNER TOTAL IMPORTS 1 Canada $5.7B 2 Mexico $3.6B 3 Germany $1.6B 4 Netherlands $1.4B 5 China $1.3B CT'S TOP 2024 EXPORT TRADE PARTNERS RANK PARTNER TOTAL EXPORTS 1 Canada $2.3B 2 Germany $1.8B 3 Mexico $1.7B 4 China $1.5B 5 Netherlands $1.2B Source: U.S. International Trade Administration

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