The Vermont-based fly-fishing company Orvis is now facing pressures “at a pace that we haven’t faced in our 170-year career,” company president Simon Perkins said at a roundtable on tariffs hosted by U.S. Sen. Peter Welch.

At Orvis’ flagship rod shop and factory on Wednesday, Perkins said the Trump administration’s shifting policies have not given businesses enough time to adapt their sourcing and manufacturing models to absorb the shock of tariffs. 

“It’s really hard for a business to respond quick enough to make it work,” Perkins said. “That’s when prices for consumers, that’s when American jobs, that’s when American manufacturing, that’s when that gets put at risk.”

Welch said he aims to highlight business leaders impacted by new tariff policies through roundtable discussions around the state. American business owners and consumers will bear the costs of tariffs, which Welch claimed are analogous to the “biggest tax increase in decades.”

The Trump administration has changed course on tariff policies 21 times since February, according to reporting by Forbes. 

Kevin Meyer of Mary Meyer Stuffed Toys, a wholesale toy manufacturer based out of Townshend, said he feels “lots of frustration” with the fast-paced changes to tariffs. He said one of the challenges as a business owner is staying informed and charting a way forward amid the uncertain impact of tariff policies. This sentiment was echoed by many business leaders at the roundtable. 

“How can you have a business that way?” Meyer said. “How can you plan for your new product lines that are coming out, how to price them, where to get them made?”

Vermont is one of 34 states that hold Canada as its top foreign trade partner, and many businesses nationwide are feeling the effects of erratic tariff policy, Welch said. Last week, Welch and four other congressional colleagues met with the Canadian prime minister and other officials to help restore the relationship, but he said “that requires us to get back on track to a mutually beneficial trade regime.”

Tim Miles, the fourth-generation owner of building supplier rk Miles, said his business relies on price stability for wood products sourced from Canada or hardware supplies sourced abroad. He said his customers are often spending large sums to build or renovate their homes and need to plan ahead for costs, but that sudden tariffs are causing “a lot of confusion in the marketplace for our customers.”

David Black and Anja Wrede, who contract with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and create specialty bikes and mobility equipment for those with disabilities through their company RAD Innovations Inc., said they source specialized components from around the world for their bike designs.

Black said sourcing specialized components locally for bikes designed to fit the needs of each outdoor recreator is “logistically impossible to imagine.” He said the erratic nature of the Trump administration’s tariff policies undermines the company’s dependability and survival. 

Coral Vogel Cutting, owner of Brattleboro-based Back Roads Granola, said the 20 ingredients essential for her organic, non-GMO, vegan granola cannot be grown locally, so the company is forced to bear the cost of tariffs. She said the company does not have much leeway to increase their prices to recuperate costs, as customers already pay “top dollar” for the high-quality product. 

“We cannot source the quantities of ingredients that we need for most of our products within the United States. It just does not exist,” Vogel Cutting said. “We’ve built our brand around making a very clean product, and now we’re being penalized for that.”

Perkins, of the Orvis fly-fishing equipment company, said the continued uncertainty with the Trump administration’s tariff policies will “stall out innovation” because businesses have to plan ahead for pricing and demand before taking a risk on a new product. 

“Innovation starts with strategy and the strategy starts with the customer and understanding the marketplace,” Perkins said. “If that’s unknown, it’s really hard to understand how you’re going to build that pathway to innovation.”

Welch said he is concerned with the Trump administration’s tariff policies using a “very blunt instrument in an arbitrary way.” Although the Constitution gives Congress the power to set tariffs, it allowed the executive branch to take on that role through the Trade Act of 1974.

“It’s been distressing to me that many of my colleagues are accepting the utilization of that limited authority that was given at a time when it was more restrained, and are not insisting that we take back the capacity in Congress to do what the Constitution provides us with the authority to do,” Welch said. 

The same day Vermont business leaders met in Manchester, the U.S. Court of International Trade found the tariffs unconstitutional. The panel of judges ruled that the broad 10% tariff on most of foreign U.S. trading partners and the specific tariff policies against Canada, China and Mexico for national security reasons exceeded the authority of the executive branch. 
But the decision was temporarily halted on Thursday by the U.S. Court of Appeals, so tariffs will continue to be imposed for now.

A federal judge in Vermont has ordered the release of a Russian-born Harvard Medical School scientist from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, agreeing with the researcher’s attorney that she was unlawfully detained. 

However, the ruling by Judge Christina Reiss, which came at the end of a roughly 90-minute hearing Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Burlington, won’t immediately mean freedom for 31-year-old Kseniia Petrova.

ICE had detained Petrova after she arrived at Boston Logan International Airport from France in February and did not properly declare frog embryo research samples. She has since been charged criminally in federal court in Massachusetts for allegedly trying to smuggle the frog embryos into the United States.

Petrova remains detained on that criminal charge. 

Her attorney, Gregory Romanovsky, said in court Wednesday that he expected his client to have a hearing in that case as early as next week in Massachusetts when her release on the criminal charge could be considered. 

Petrova’s ICE detention case landed in federal court in Vermont because, after she was taken into custody at the Boston airport in February, she was held at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility, Vermont’s women’s prison, in South Burlington for a week before ICE transferred her to a facility in Louisiana.

Petrova brought a legal action – a habeas petition – in Vermont’s federal court during the week she was in custody in the state, alleging she was being unlawfully held by federal authorities.

Reiss’s decision on Wednesday makes her the third federal judge in Vermont to grant a person’s release from ICE custody in a high-profile immigration case since President Donald Trump took office in January. 

Earlier this month, Federal Judge William K. Sessions III granted the release of a Tufts University student who had been held in ICE custody for a short time in the state. And, in April, federal Judge Geoffrey Crawford ordered the release of a Columbia University student living in Vermont when he was taken into ICE custody.

Reiss, Crawford and Sessions all preside in federal courts in Burlington.

In all three Vermont federal cases, the rulings came over the objections from attorneys from the Trump administration’s U.S. Department of Justice.

Reiss, in ordering Petrova’s release from ICE custody Wednesday, sided with the scientist’s lawyer, who argued that his client had been unlawfully detained by federal immigration authorities. Often, according to Petrova’s attorney, the penalty for failing to declare non-dangerous items was simply a fine or forfeiture. 

The judge during Wednesday’s hearing spoke of the researcher’s groundbreaking work as well as her lack of a criminal history. 

“Her activities in the United States did nothing to threaten public safety,” Reiss said of Petrova. 

“To the contrary,” the judge added. “She has furthered this country’s interest in finding a cure and treatment for cancer in the area of biological and regenerative research. Her work is described as excellent, exceptional and of national importance by people qualified to render those opinions.”

The research samples Petrova was accused of bringing into the United States, Reiss said, were “wholly non-hazardous, non-toxic, nonliving” and “posed a threat to no one.” 

In a federal court filing in the Vermont case, Petrova’s attorney described the incident leading to her custody as an “inadvertent failure” to declare on a customs form frog embryos that she was bringing to the United States from a research facility in France when she had traveled on vacation.

The request for the frog embryos, Petrova’s lawyer wrote in the filing, came from the leader of a research group at Harvard Medical School “under whose leadership she works.” 

U.S. Customs and Border Protection cancelled Petrova’s visa after finding the frog embryos, and federal authorities have said they were seeking to send her to Russia. 

Petrova, according to court filings and in published media accounts, has said she fears returning to Russia, where she has faced past persecution for her political activities, including protesting against the war in Ukraine. 

Reiss, in ordering Petrova’s release from ICE custody Wednesday, addressed her concern about the possibility of returning to Russia.

“Ms. Petrova’s life and wellbeing are in peril if she is deported to Russia,” the judge said, adding: “The government has made it clear and unequivocal that it intends to deport her to Russia unless she is granted asylum, and that it will not allow her to depart to another country where she will be safe and where she has legitimate immigration status.”

In a statement, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has said Petrova was “lawfully” detained after “lying to federal officers about carrying substances into the country.” 

Romanovsky, Petrova’s lawyer, had called on Reiss during the hearing to issue an order preventing ICE from arresting his client again if she were released from custody on the federal criminal charge in Massachusetts. 

Reiss did not grant that request, saying she didn’t want to prohibit an executive branch agency from taking “future actions which are uncertain.”

Insead, the judge pointed to comments during the hearing made by Jeffrey Hartman, a U.S. Department of Justice attorney, who said he was not aware of any plans by ICE to re-arrest Petrova if she were to be released on the Massachusetts case. 

Petrova took part in the hearing by video from the ICE detention center in Louisiana, where she has been held since shortly after she was taken into custody and transferred from Vermont. 

Four friends, colleagues and researchers testified during Wednesday’s hearing on Petrova’s behalf, attesting to her scientific skills and nonviolent demeanor, with one associate calling her “beyond kind.” 

MILTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Vermont offers a variety of burial methods and alternatives, now including a greener way to honor your loved ones.

The vast majority of Vermonters opt for flame cremation – the traditional form we’ve all heard of.

A funeral home out of Milton is the first in Vermont to cremate using water.

Jonathan Daponte of Minor Funeral Home cracks open Vermont’s very first water cremation machine.

“I wanted to be the forerunner of innovation,” he said.

Other funeral homes send bodies out of state for water cremation, but Minor Funeral Home will do it on-site.

“There’s an intrinsic value to families where knowing their loved one doesn’t get transported to another facility. Everything is done here in-house,” said Daponte.

Crews are hooking everything up and finalizing the space, and Daponte says he’s already got families asking about the new option.

Water cremation – or alkaline hydrolysis – uses water, an alkaline solution, heat, and pressure to dissolve the soft tissue of the body.

“After that, the remaining material is going to be dehydrated, and then after that, it’s going to be pulverized to the same consistency so that everyone can see what you would see in the typical cremains,” said Daponte.

Water cremation takes longer than flame cremation and costs several hundred dollars more, but has a much smaller carbon footprint.

Flame cremation can release over 500 pounds of CO2, or the equivalent of driving 600 miles. On the other hand, water cremation releases at least 90% less emissions.

Local experts point out that natural burial and human composting have even smaller carbon footprints, but water cremation is a step in the right direction.

“Alkaline hydrolysis is an improvement over flame cremation. We’ll see what happens as the technology improves. And we’ll see, you know, where that fits in the spectrum,” said Lee Webster of Vermont Funeral.

Daponte says the expensive machine, over $300,000, and the higher customer price tag keep other homes from investing in water cremation.

As the state searches for ways to curb emissions, he believes water cremation is the way of the future.

“I can foresee this in 50 years being the only choice you have,” said Daponte.

Daponte says he’s done one water cremation so far and is receiving calls for others.

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