Spirit Halloween’s CEO says Trump’s tariffs were ‘going to put us out of business’—they even set up a war room. Then it had its best year ever

Standing in the White House Rose Garden, President Donald Trump declared April 2, 2025, would be now known as “Liberation Day.” That day, he announced tariffs on imports from nearly every country on earth, and promised “jobs and factories will come roaring back” to the U.S.

Within days, after China retaliated, the U.S. tariff on Chinese goods rose to 145%. The increase came just as Spirit Halloween’s goods began shipping from Asia.

“This was going to put us out of business,” Steven Silverstein, CEO of Spirit’s parent company, Spencer Spirit Holdings, told Fortune.

Silverstein said the tariffs were worse for Spirit than COVID. In March 2020, every Spencer’s store closed just as Spirit was choosing locations and signing leases for the fall. The company decided to go ahead with Halloween anyway and opened all of its stores that September. In spite of all that went down that year, he said the business has more than doubled since 2019.

But the tariffs were harder because they hit in the middle of shipping season. “They were implemented immediately without giving business the........

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