ST. MARY PARISH — As a 50% tariff on imported Steel and aluminum takes effect this week, Louisiana manufacturers are bracing for impact. Heath Hoffpauir, Executive Vice President at Hanko Boats in Berwick, says the rising costs are already changing how companies like his operate.
“Aluminum is our biggest thing. We do everything out of aluminum, so tariffs affect us a lot — because this is our bottom-line cost,” Hoffpauir said.
President Donald Trump’s proclamation, signed last week, doubles the previous 25% tariff first announced in February. The White House says the measure aims to protect national security and domestic production, citing unfair trade practices and global oversupply.
The change applies to nearly all U.S. trading partners — except the united kingdom, where tariffs will stay at 25 percent through early July. But on the ground, business owners say the ripple effects are quickly reaching them.
“The tariffs kicked in very slowly at first,” Hoffpauir said. “But now they’re restocking their inventory — so they’re getting hit with them. There’s no going around it.”
Political science professor David Hughes, of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, says this kind of sweeping tariff action is rare in recent American history.
“We haven't had tariffs like this on global imports at this scale really since the 1930s, so for modern Americans, we haven't seen tariffs like this in our lifetime,” Hughes said.
He notes that the size of the increase — from 25% to 50% — is significant, especially given that even a 10% rate in earlier years marked a departure from longstanding U.S. trade norms.
“Even when the Trump administration announced a 10% tariff on imports, that was a much higher rate than where things had been prior to this administration, so you really have to put those numbers into perspective. Fifty is just a huge increase over what the status quo was,” Hughes explained.
Hoffpauir says the company sources its aluminum from distributors across the Gulf Coast and has already seen a 30% price jump from March to early June. He shares that business has experienced a decline this year, though demand hasn’t completely vanished.
“This year I can see it down probably about 10% to 15%. The business is still there — there’s a lot of jobs that are just the wait-and-see approach,” he said. “Everybody is in the same boat as us, so it’s not like somebody’s picking on us. It’s the same across the board.”
Hughes says it could take weeks before the impact of higher metal prices shows up in consumer goods, especially those arriving from overseas.
“Importers are gonna have to pay a higher tax in order to bring steel into the United States, but it’s not just the foreign steel that’s gonna get more expensive; tariffs also have an inflationary impact on domestic supply as well,” he said. “Because once you add tariffs to foreign commodities, that is going to shrink supply, and we know that when supply is shrinking, prices also increase.”
He added that it may take time before consumers notice the change, particularly for goods arriving from overseas.
“We’re talking about the effect on consumers now, but some of these imports from other sides of the globe — it takes some time for it to hit the average consumer,” Hughes said.
At Hanko Boats, Hoffpauir said the team is adjusting where they can — but keeping a close eye on what comes next.
