By Bob Tita and Ryan Felton
Rising costs for screws are rippling through manufacturing supply chains.
President Trump’s tariffs implemented this month on steel and aluminum imports have scrambled the supply chains of companies that make everything from car parts to appliances and football helmets to lawn mowers.
Unlike a similar Trump levy in 2018, the latest ones cover a wider range of imports, including the screws, nails and bolts that serve as the connective tissue in manufacturing.
That has set off a hunt to find domestic supplies of some of manufacturing’s smallest components. Tariffs on imported steel and aluminum are already driving up the costs of foreign and domestic metal used to make those components. Manufacturing executives said the U.S. doesn’t have the plants to churn out the amount of steel wire or screws and other fasteners needed to displace imports.
“The production capacity we need doesn’t exist here in the U.S.,” said Gene Simpson, president of Illinois-based fastener maker Semblex. “It’s a select group of suppliers.”
And companies that use screws and other metal parts covered by tariffs say their customers won’t tolerate price increases. Some construction contractors may delay projects until they get a handle on how to blunt the effects of import duties.
About $178 billion of steel and aluminum products imported by the U.S. last year are now subject to a 25% tariff, according to Jason Miller, a supply-chain management professor at Michigan State University. That is more than three times greater than the import products affected by the original 2018 tariffs.
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