Tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum still a concern for local metal fabricating company

The useful part

Inside All Metals Fabricating in Allen, working with sheet metal is their business. "What that means is we can take a sheet of metal or block of metal and make it into just about anything," All Metals Fabricating CEO Lance Thrailkill said. That means the tariff war between the United States and Canada is causing prices to stack up.

How it works

• "First, with aluminum we've seen an 84 percent increase in price since March of last year," Thrailkill said.
• "That's substantial, very impactful." And what impacts him also impacts his customers' costs.
• He said navigating the tariffs and costs has been a learning curve to try and stay ahead of the rising prices.
• "If you know it's going to be increasing, you need to maybe buy more material to stock more," Thrailkill said.
• "Everybody wants stability and certainty, you know, as much as we can have.

What to take from it

So, the instability is really challenging, you know, with prices moving all over the place all the time."

Details worth keeping

"Fortunately, we're able to pass a lot of that on to our customer base, but oftentimes also we do get squeezed in terms of margin, so you might be able to maintain the same profit amount, but your margin goes down, so that is not ideal," Thrailkill explained. "And so, there's some of that going on as well. We need to be strategic and think in advance, but you know that that requires, you know, cash to do so, and so you got to be able to sit on that inventory when you do that." He's remaining hopeful a deal can be made soon between the U.S.